A constraint-logic object-oriented language

Abstract

Object-oriented (OO) programming languages prevail in the development of enterprise software, but they do not particularly support the implementation of software which includes solving complicated search problems with dynamically appearing constraints, e. g. as found in logistics. Such problems could be tackled by implementing the main business logic in e. g. Java and the search in a constraint-logic language. However, integrating both aspects is clumsy. Thus, we propose the constraint-logic OO language Muli. It facilitates an integrated implementation of applications that use both aspects. Muli extends Java by logic variables and encapsulated search. Its implementation is based on a symbolic Java virtual machine and constraint solvers. Outside of search regions, Muli behaves just like Java. We motivate the benefits of integrating object-oriented programming and constraint-logic programming and introduce concepts that are required to achieve a seamless integration. We also describe our implementation of these concepts and discuss our approach.