Representing Constraint Satisfaction Problems in Answer Set Programming

In this paper we describe an approach for integrating answer set programming (ASP) and constraint programming, in which ASP is viewed as a specification language for constraint satisfaction problems. ASP programs are written in such a way that their answer sets encode the desired constraint satisfaction problems; the solutions of those problems are then found using constraint satisfaction techniques. Differently from other methods of integrating ASP and constraint programming, our approach has the advantage of allowing the use of off-the-shelf, unmodified ASP solvers and constraint solvers, and of global constraints, which substantially increases the practical applicability of the approach to industrial-size problems.