GIFT: A Generic Interface for Reusing Filtering Algorithms

Abstract

Many dierent constraint programming (CP) systems exist today. For each CP system, there are many dierent ltering algorithms. Researchers and developers usually choose a CP system of their choice to implement their ltering algorithms. To use these ltering algorithms on another system, we have to port the code over. This situation is clearly not desirable. In this paper, we propose a generic C++ interface for writing ltering algorithms called GIFT (Generic Interface for FilTers). By providing the generic interface on dierent CP systems, we can reuse any ltering algorithms easily. A case study on reusing scheduling ltering algorithms between Mozart and Figaro further highlights the feasibility of this approach.