Chapter 24 - Configuration
Section snippets
A Whole Spectrum of Problems
Configuration has been an outgrowth of research on rule-based expert systems. John McDermott [41] used the term configuration for a specific form of a design task [9], where a system was assembled out of predefined components that are connected in predefinedways. Whereas more innovative design tasks often require a suitable modeling of the physical behavior of components [64], work on rule-based configurators focused on the functional aspects of components. Frayman and Mittal summarized those
Configuration Knowledge
This section introduces the knowledge that exists about components, namely component catalogs in sub-Section 24.2.1, component structure in sub-Section 24.2.2, and component constraints in sub-Section 24.2.2. It introduces the different ingredients of a component such as functions (features), attributes, subcomponents and connections, and resources and provides the basic vocabulary for formulating constraint models.
Constraint Models for Configuration
A configuration problem is defined by functional requirements and by a configuration model that describes the possible configurations according to the given configuration knowledge. The configuration models in the literature differ quite substantially in the way choices and constraints are represented, although they use the same product models at their origins. It is indeed possible to build different constraint models for the given configuration knowledge. It is even possible to use different
Problem Solving for Configuration
Whereas Constraint Programming is used to find a solution or an optimal solution of a CSP, configuration brings in new problem-solving tasks, such as the maintenance of global consistency in interactive configuration, the computation of an explanation if a given set of requirements cannot be satisfied, or the computation of a relaxation of those requirements. The automatic computation of configurations also has particularities. Solution search should produce functionally well-justified
Conclusion
This chapter has given an overview on constraint-based configuration while stressing the particularities of configuration. Configuration is not a classical application of ConstraintProgramming. The constraint networks are not static, but evolve during problem solving. As such, the formalism of constraint networks is not sufficient to specify a configuration problem and it is necessary to go up to a higher modeling level, which describes the configuration knowledge independent of a
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