Solving the all-interval series problem: SAT vs CP

Van-Hau Nguyen, Son Thai Mai

Abstract: Although Boolean satisfiability (abbreviated as SAT) is a sub-field of constraint programming (CP), the former states and solves problems as a black-box approach, whereas the latter aims at being tunable and programmable. Although many researches bridging SAT and CP have been provided, surprisingly, only few researchers have compared the SAT and CP approaches on a particular problem. This paper studies how to solve the all-interval series problem through both approaches. We will show that by using a state-of-the-art SAT solver and an appropriate SAT encoding the SAT approach obtains a significantly higher performance over the CP approach. Furthermore, we also provide the state-of-the-art result for several all-interval series instances.