A MIP Backend for the IDP System

TL;DR

This paper investigates the use of a MIP solver as a backend for the IDP knowledge base system, comparing its performance to the traditional CP solver to determine when MIP is advantageous.

Contribution

It introduces CPLEX as a MIP backend for IDP and provides experimental analysis comparing its effectiveness to the existing CP backend.

Findings

MIP backend performs better in certain problem instances.

The paper identifies scenarios where MIP is preferable over CP.

Experimental results highlight the strengths and limitations of each backend.

Abstract

The IDP knowledge base system currently uses MiniSAT(ID) as its backend Constraint Programming (CP) solver. A few similar systems have used a Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) solver as backend. However, so far little is known about when the MIP solver is preferable. This paper explores this question. It describes the use of CPLEX as a backend for IDP and reports on experiments comparing both backends.