Constraint Programming

Constraint Programming (CP) is a declarative optimization paradigm in which a problem is formulated as a set of variables, finite domains, and constraints, and a solver systematically searches for assignments that satisfy all constraints. Formalized comprehensively by Rossi, van Beek, and Walsh in their 2006 Handbook of Constraint Programming, CP unifies propagation-based pruning with intelligent backtracking search to tackle combinatorial problems across scheduling, planning, and configuration domains.