A Qualitative Quantitative Simulator Based on Constraint Logic Programming

Incorporating quantitative information into qualitative reasoning is a key problem for predicting and explaining the causal mechanisms of actual physical systems. In this article, we propose a framework for designing qualitative reasoning systems based on constraint logic programming. The basic idea of the framework is to amalgamate qualitative and quantitative knowledge about the domain model within a unified framework of constraint logic programming. This amalgamation can be achieved naturally by the underlying constraint solver that deals with partial ordering relations on the qualitative knowledge. Consequently, complex inference mechanisms such as maintaining the ordering relations and solving numerical constraints are committed to the constraint solver.