The Design of COMMA: An Extensible Framework for Mapping Constrained Objects to Native Solver Models

This paper presents the first implementation of COMMA, a new solver independent language for modeling constraint- based problems. The combination of a constraint language with an object-oriented framework represents the base of the core of COMMA. Extension capabilities have also been included with the aim of tackling a wide range of applications from combinatorial to continuous problems. A COMMA compiler has been implemented through a three layered architecture including a dynamic parsing system for handling efficiently the mapping process. In particular, COMMA models can be translated to different solvers, currently to ECLiPSe and Gecode/J.