Constraint-based scheduling:: An introduction for newcomers

Constraint-based scheduling is an approach for solving real-life scheduling problems by stating constraints over the problem variables. By providing generic constraint satisfaction techniques on one side and specialised constraints on the other side, constraint programming achieves a very good generality and efficiency and thus it becomes very popular in solving real-life combinatorial (optimisation) problems. In this paper we present some constraint satisfaction techniques used in constraint-based scheduling. Our goal is to introduce the technology to newcomers rather than to provide a deep survey of the area or to describe some new results there, Copyright (C) 2003 IFAC.