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Tractable Optimization Problems through Hypergraph-Based Structural Restrictions

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Book cover Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 5556))

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Abstract

Several variants of the Constraint Satisfaction Problem have been proposed and investigated in the literature for modelling those scenarios where solutions are associated with some given costs. Within these frameworks computing an optimal solution is an NP-hard problem in general; yet, when restricted over classes of instances whose constraint interactions can be modelled via (nearly-)acyclic graphs, this problem is known to be solvable in polynomial time. In this paper, larger classes of tractable instances are singled out, by discussing solution approaches based on exploiting hypergraph acyclicity and, more generally, structural decomposition methods, such as (hyper)tree decompositions.

G.Gottlob works at the Computing Laboratory and at the Oxford Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, Oxford University. This work was done in the context of the EPSRC grant EP/G055114/1 “Constraint Satisfaction for Configuration: Logical Fundamentals,Algorithms, and Complexity” and of Gottlob’s Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Oxford University, UK

    Georg Gottlob

  2. University of Calabria, Italy

    Gianluigi Greco & Francesco Scarcello

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  1. Georg Gottlob
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  2. Gianluigi Greco
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  3. Francesco Scarcello
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Georges Köhler Allee 79, 79110, Freiburg, Germany

    Susanne Albers

  2. Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Sapienza University of Rome, Via Ariosto 25, 00184, Roma, Italy

    Alberto Marchetti-Spaccamela

  3. Tel Aviv University Google R&D Center, School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Yossi Matias

  4. University of Patras and CTI, N. Kazantzaki Street 1, 26504, Rion, Patras, Greece

    Sotiris Nikoletseas

  5. RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl Informatik 7, Ahornstraße 55, 52056, Aachen, Germany

    Wolfgang Thomas

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Gottlob, G., Greco, G., Scarcello, F. (2009). Tractable Optimization Problems through Hypergraph-Based Structural Restrictions . In: Albers, S., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A., Matias, Y., Nikoletseas, S., Thomas, W. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5556. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02930-1_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-02930-1_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-02929-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-02930-1

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