Constraint programming and graph algorithms

Aconstraint system includes a set of variables and a set of relations among these variables, calledconstraints. The solution of a constraint system is an assignment of values to variables so that all, or many, of the relations are made true. A simple and efficient method for constraint resolution has been proposed in the work of B.N. Freeman-Benson, J. Maloney, and A. Borning. We show how their method is related to the classical problem of graph matching, and from this connection we derive new resolution algorithms.