Abstract

This paper introduces the Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) platform ECLiPSe. ECLiPSe is designed to be more than an implementation of CLP: it also supports mathematical programming and stochastic programming techniques. The crucial advantage of ECLiPSe is that it enables the programmer to use a combination of algorithms appropriate to the application at hand. This benefit results from the ECLiPSe facility to support fine-grained hybridisation. ECLiPSe is designed for solving difficult "combinatorial" industrial problems in the areas of planning, scheduling and resource allocation. The platform offers a conceptual modelling language for specifying the problem clearly and simply, in a way that is neutral as to the algorithm which will be used to solve it. Based on the conceptual model it is easy to construct alternative design models, also expressed in ECLiPSe.

Citations