Symmetric cardinality constraints

Abstract: This thesis contains previously published papers concerning differentaspects of symmetric cardinality constraints. A symmetric cardinalityconstraint generalizes cardinality constraints like constraint ofdifference and global cardinality constraint. The algorithmsformulating the basis for consistency checking and filtering of asymmetric cardinality constraint can be successfully used to model andsolve several other problems like cardinality matrix problems, Latinsquare problems and rostering problems. This thesis begins with an introduction to constraint satisfaction anddescribe several problems, mainly dynamic scheduling problems, whichcan be modeled using this framework. The two following papersintroduce symmetric cardinality constraint and its weighted version.They also provide methods for computing their consistency andalgorithms for filtering their domains. Finally, the last paperdescribes methods for maintaining consistency of a symmetriccardinality constraint with costs, in the context of dynamicconstraint satisfaction.