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Section: New Software and Platforms
CHOCO
Keywords: Constraint Programming - Scheduling - Optimisation - Operational research - Financial analysis - Planning
Scientific Description
or second consecutive year, CHOCO has participated at the MiniZinc Challenge , an annual competition of constraint programming solvers. In concurrency with 16 other solvers, CHOCO has won three bronze medals in three out of four categories (Free search, Parallel search and Open class). Five versions have been released all year long, the last one (v3.3.0, Dec. 17th) has the particularity to be promoted on Maven Central Repository. The major modifications were related to a simplification of the API but also improvement of the overall solver.
Within the context of the PhD thesis of Charles Prud'homme, a domain specific language that allows prototyping propagation engines was integrated within CHOCO, A paper appears at Constraints.
Within the context of the PhD thesis of Charles Prud'homme, a generic strategy based on explanations for large neighborhood search was designed and integrated within CHOCO. A corresponding paper appears at Constraints.
Within the context of the PhD thesis of Jean-Guillaume Fages, a documented package for graph variables was designed and integrated within CHOCO .
Functional Description
CHOCO is a Java discrete constraints library for describing hard combinatorial problems in the form of Constraint Satisfaction Problems and solving them with Constraint Programming techniques. Choco can be used to solve a broad range of real combinatorial problems. It is easy to use and offers excellent performance. This technique enables non-specialists to tackle strategic or operational problems, for instance, problems related to planning, scheduling, logistics, financial analysis and bio-informatics.