Integration of Distributed Constraint-Based Configurators

Con guration problems are a thriving application area for declarative knowledge representation that experiences a constant increase in size and complexity of knowledge bases. However, today's con gurators are designed for solving local con guration problems not providing any distributed con guration problem solving functionality. Consequently the challenges for the construction of con guration systems are the integrated support of con guration knowledge base development and maintenance and the integration of methods that enable distributed con guration problem solving. In this paper we show how to employ a standard design language (Uni ed Modeling Language UML) for the construction of con guration knowledge bases (component structure and functional architecture) and automatically translate the resulting models into an executable logic representation which can further be exploited for calculating distributed con gurations. Functional architectures are shared among cooperating con guration systems serving as basis for the exchange of requirements between those systems. An example for con guring cars shows the whole process from the design of the con guration model to distributed con guration problem solving.