scholarly journals Iterative Plan Construction for the Workflow Satisfiability Problem

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 555-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Cohen ◽  
J. Crampton ◽  
A. Gagarin ◽  
G. Gutin ◽  
M. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Constraint Satisfaction Problem ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
Satisfiability Problem ◽  
Business Rules ◽  
Generic Algorithm ◽  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Constraint Language ◽  
Fixed Parameter ◽  
Language User

The Workflow Satisfiability Problem (WSP) is a problem of practical interest that arises whenever tasks need to be performed by authorized users, subject to constraints defined by business rules. We are required to decide whether there exists a plan - an assignment of tasks to authorized users - such that all constraints are satisfied. It is natural to see the WSP as a subclass of the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP) in which the variables are tasks and the domain is the set of users. What makes the WSP distinctive is that the number of tasks is usually very small compared to the number of users, so it is appropriate to ask for which constraint languages the WSP is fixed-parameter tractable (FPT), parameterized by the number of tasks. This novel approach to the WSP, using techniques from CSP, has enabled us to design a generic algorithm which is FPT for several families of workflow constraints considered in the literature. Furthermore, we prove that the union of FPT languages remains FPT if they satisfy a simple compatibility condition. Lastly, we identify a new FPT constraint language, user-independent constraints, that includes many of the constraints of interest in business processing systems. We demonstrate that our generic algorithm has provably optimal running time O*(2^(klog k)), for this language, where k is the number of tasks.

scholarly journals Threshold Treewidth and Hypertree Width

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ganian ◽  
Andre Schidler ◽  
Manuel Sorge ◽  
Stefan Szeider
Keyword(s):  
Constraint Satisfaction ◽  
Constraint Satisfaction Problem ◽  
Structural Parameters ◽  
Exact Methods ◽  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Computational Costs ◽  
Fixed Parameter ◽  
Account Information ◽  
The Given ◽  
Theoretical Results

Treewidth and hypertree width have proven to be highly successful structural parameters in the context of the Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP). When either of these parameters is bounded by a constant, then CSP becomes solvable in polynomial time. However, here the order of the polynomial in the running time depends on the width, and this is known to be unavoidable; therefore, the problem is not fixed-parameter tractable parameterized by either of these width measures. Here we introduce an enhancement of tree and hypertree width through a novel notion of thresholds, allowing the associated decompositions to take into account information about the computational costs associated with solving the given CSP instance. Aside from introducing these notions, we obtain efficient theoretical as well as empirical algorithms for computing threshold treewidth and hypertree width and show that these parameters give rise to fixed-parameter algorithms for CSP as well as other, more general problems. We complement our theoretical results with experimental evaluations in terms of heuristics as well as exact methods based on SAT/SMT encodings.

scholarly journals Parameterised complexity of model checking and satisfiability in propositional dependence logic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasir Mahmood ◽  
Arne Meier
Keyword(s):  
Model Checking ◽  
Decision Problems ◽  
Satisfiability Problem ◽  
Team Size ◽  
Dependence Logic ◽  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Size Number ◽  
Completeness Result ◽  
Fixed Parameter ◽  
The Subject

AbstractDependence Logic was introduced by Jouko Väänänen in 2007. We study a propositional variant of this logic (PDL) and investigate a variety of parameterisations with respect to central decision problems. The model checking problem (MC) of PDL is NP-complete (Ebbing and Lohmann, SOFSEM 2012). The subject of this research is to identify a list of parameterisations (formula-size, formula-depth, treewidth, team-size, number of variables) under which MC becomes fixed-parameter tractable. Furthermore, we show that the number of disjunctions or the arity of dependence atoms (dep-arity) as a parameter both yield a paraNP-completeness result. Then, we consider the satisfiability problem (SAT) which classically is known to be NP-complete as well (Lohmann and Vollmer, Studia Logica 2013). There we are presenting a different picture: under team-size, or dep-arity SAT is paraNP-complete whereas under all other mentioned parameters the problem is FPT. Finally, we introduce a variant of the satisfiability problem, asking for a team of a given size, and show for this problem an almost complete picture.

scholarly journals Pattern-Based Approach to the Workflow Satisfiability Problem with User-Independent Constraints

2019 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 85-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Karapetyan ◽  
Andrew J. Parkes ◽  
Gregory Gutin ◽  
Andrei Gagarin
Keyword(s):  
Computational Study ◽  
Empirical Evaluation ◽  
Practical Interest ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Satisfiability Problem ◽  
Polynomial Space ◽  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Fpt Algorithms ◽  
Fpt Algorithm ◽  
New Interpretation

The fixed parameter tractable (FPT) approach is a powerful tool in tackling computationally hard problems.  In this paper, we link FPT results to classic artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to show how they complement each other.  Specifically, we consider the workflow satisfiability problem (WSP) which asks whether there exists an assignment of authorised users to the steps in a workflow specification, subject to certain constraints on the assignment.  It was shown by Cohen et al. (JAIR 2014) that WSP restricted to the class of user-independent constraints (UI), covering many practical cases, admits FPT algorithms, i.e. can be solved in time exponential only in the number of steps k and polynomial in the number of users n.  Since usually k << n in WSP, such FPT algorithms are of great practical interest. We present a new interpretation of the FPT nature of the WSP with UI constraints giving a decomposition of the problem into two levels.  Exploiting this two-level split, we develop a new FPT algorithm that is by many orders of magnitude faster than the previous state-of-the-art WSP algorithm and also has only polynomial-space complexity.  We also introduce new pseudo-Boolean (PB) and Constraint Satisfaction (CSP) formulations of the WSP with UI constraints which efficiently exploit this new decomposition of the problem and raise the novel issue of how to use general-purpose solvers to tackle FPT problems in a fashion that meets FPT efficiency expectations.  In our computational study, we investigate, for the first time, the phase transition (PT) properties of the WSP, under a model for generation of random instances.  We show how PT studies can be extended, in a novel fashion, to support empirical evaluation of scaling of FPT algorithms.

scholarly journals Towards fixed-parameter tractable algorithms for abstract argumentation

2012 ◽  
Vol 186 ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Dvořák ◽  
Reinhard Pichler ◽  
Stefan Woltran
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Abstract Argumentation ◽  
Fixed Parameter

scholarly journals Interval Completion Is Fixed Parameter Tractable

2009 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 2007-2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yngve Villanger ◽  
Pinar Heggernes ◽  
Christophe Paul ◽  
Jan Arne Telle
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Fixed Parameter

When is Red-Blue Nonblocker Fixed-Parameter Tractable?

2018 ◽  
pp. 515-528
Author(s):  
Serge Gaspers ◽  
Joachim Gudmundsson ◽  
Michael Horton ◽  
Stefan Rümmele
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Fixed Parameter

Multiplicative Parameterization Above a Guarantee

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Fedor V. Fomin ◽  
Petr A. Golovach ◽  
Daniel Lokshtanov ◽  
Fahad Panolan ◽  
Saket Saurabh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Minimum Size ◽  
Input Graph ◽  
Fixed Parameter Tractable ◽  
Long Cycle ◽  
Fixed Parameter ◽  
Parameterized Problem ◽  
Fixed Constant ◽  
Fixed Parameter Algorithm ◽  
Np Hardness ◽  
Additive Form

Parameterization above a guarantee is a successful paradigm in Parameterized Complexity. To the best of our knowledge, all fixed-parameter tractable problems in this paradigm share an additive form defined as follows. Given an instance ( I,k ) of some (parameterized) problem π with a guarantee g(I) , decide whether I admits a solution of size at least (or at most) k + g(I) . Here, g(I) is usually a lower bound on the minimum size of a solution. Since its introduction in 1999 for M AX SAT and M AX C UT (with g(I) being half the number of clauses and half the number of edges, respectively, in the input), analysis of parameterization above a guarantee has become a very active and fruitful topic of research. We highlight a multiplicative form of parameterization above (or, rather, times) a guarantee: Given an instance ( I,k ) of some (parameterized) problem π with a guarantee g(I) , decide whether I admits a solution of size at least (or at most) k · g(I) . In particular, we study the Long Cycle problem with a multiplicative parameterization above the girth g(I) of the input graph, which is the most natural guarantee for this problem, and provide a fixed-parameter algorithm. Apart from being of independent interest, this exemplifies how parameterization above a multiplicative guarantee can arise naturally. We also show that, for any fixed constant ε > 0, multiplicative parameterization above g(I) 1+ε of Long Cycle yields para-NP-hardness, thus our parameterization is tight in this sense. We complement our main result with the design (or refutation of the existence) of fixed-parameter algorithms as well as kernelization algorithms for additional problems parameterized multiplicatively above girth.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document