Domain-Independent Constraint Solver Extension

Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) is a class of programming languages inheriting declar-ativity from logic programming and eeciency from constraint solving. The CLP scheme enables to design applications by declaring relations (the constraints) between high-level objects. However , constraints are restricted to formulae handled by solvers. Thus, the declarativity may be jeopardized due to the scope of solvers. SoleX is a mechanism for extending constraint solvers in order to handle new function symbols on the computation domain. This extension consists in building two kinds of rule-based transformations: domain independent rules for symbolically processing constraints with additional function symbols and rules for completing the information on the domain with the usual interpretation of these additional functions. Some extensions of computation domains have already been solved in order to demonstrate the broad scope of SoleX potential applications.