We show that some common and important global constraints like ALL-DIFFERENT and GCC can be decomposed into simple arithmetic constraints on which we achieve bound or range consistency, and in some cases even greater pruning. These decompositions can be easily added to new solvers. They also provide other constraints with access to the state of the propagator by sharing of variables. Such sharing can be used to improve propagation between constraints. We report experiments with our decomposition in a pseudo-Boolean solver.
Most recently, we demonstrated that the ALL-DIFFERENT and GCC constraint can be decomposed into simple primitive constraints without hindering bound consistency propagation REF .
Decompositions of All Different, Global Cardinality and Related Constraints
IJCAI-2009
Computer Science