Advisors for Incremental Propagation

While incremental propagation for global constraints is recognized to be important, little research has been devoted to how propagator-centered constraint programming systems should support incremental propagation. This paper introduces advisors as a simple and efficient, yet widely applicable method for supporting incremental propagation in a propagator-centered setting. The paper presents how advisors can be used for achieving different forms of incrementality and evaluates cost and benefit for several global constraints.