Solver Requirements for Interactive Configuration

Andreas Falkner (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Alois Haselböck (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Gerfried Krames (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Gottfried Schenner (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Herwig Schreiner (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Richard Taupe (Corporate Technology, Siemens AG Österreich, Austria)

Abstract: Interactive configuration includes the user as an essential factor in the configuration process. The two main components of an interactive configurator are a user interface at the front-end and a knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) framework at the back-end. In this paper we discuss important requirements for the underlying KRR system to support an interactive configuration process. Representative of many reasoning systems and tools used for implementing product configurators, we selected MiniZinc, Choco, Potassco, Picat, CP-SAT solver, and Z3 for evaluation and reviewed them against the identified requirements. We observe that many of those requirements are not well supported by existing stand-alone solvers.

Keywords: constraint programming, interactive configuration, knowledge representation and reasoning, product configuration, user interface

Categories: F.4.1, H.5.2, I.2.4