A kind of status bar to see where the Search is in csp

[Luis Quesada]

Jorge.Pelizzoni at loria.fr wrote:
> Well, what is actually pretty much standard practice is to start a best search
> solution (in which each iteration constrains the next found solution to be
> strictly better) with a given time-limit. If search ends before that limit, you
> have a proved optimal solution; if not, you abort search and either take (the
> _possibly_ suboptimal) current solution or end up with no solution altogether
> (none was found within the limit). The possibility of no solution is important
> as in some cases search might take forever even to find one single solution.
> One variation would be to state two limits: one (more relaxed) to find the
> first solution and another to improve it. Stating a time limit to be obeyed
> _between_ improvements might also yield an impredictably long total search time
> in many cases. The point is: you are usually interested in computation that is
> guaranteed to finish, even with a failure :o)
> 
> All these schemes are somewhat easily implemented in Oz, but takes some
> knowledge of spaces and the workings of the standard search engines. One way
> I've done it was to include in the Order procedure commands to register the
> currently best solution so far, via some service/port. Making search really
> respect the time limit might also be challenging

Just to mention that we had a discussion on this particular topic in 
hackers. In that opportunity I suggested an approach for dealing with 
this issue that is actually simple (but, as you say, one needs to have 
some knowledge on spaces):

http://www.mozart-oz.org/pipermail/mozart-hackers/2006/002566.html


Cheers,

Luis