My Constraint Programming Blog: Some exiting news today

This has been an exiting day with a lot of interesting news.

G12 version 1 released
It is the NICTA G12 - Constraint Programming Platform which includes Zinc, MiniZinc, etc.

Here is the presentation of Zinc:
ZINC - A state-of-the-art solver-independent constraint modelling system.

Constraint Modelling
Zinc is a state-of-the-art constraint modelling system. A model is a set of variables, a set of constraints on and between variables, an objective function to be optimised, and problem specific data. The Zinc compiler converts a model into a program that solves the given problem.

Solver Independence
Zinc is a rich language that is not tailored for a specific solver or constraint technology. Almost any type (Booleans, integers, reals, sets, or structures) can be a decision variable in a model.

Third-party Solver Support
The Zinc compiler works with many third-party constraint solvers, such as ILOG CPLEX, GeCode, and SCIP.

Hybrid-Solvers
Different parts of the same model can be handled by different solvers. The Zinc compiler automatically sets up the necessary communication between the solvers.
Some links:
There is also interactive versions of the systems:
- Run Zinc
- Run MiniZinc
The latest MiniZinc Development Snapshots (Release of The Day) now contains support for CP-VIZ, visualization of search tree. CP-VIZ can be downloaded from SourceForge: cpviz.

In the ./bin directory of the ROTD there is a program minizinc-viz which does everything. It works directly if the CP-VIZ jar file (cpviz/visual/lib/viz.jar) is in the CLASSPATH.

It is run as the minizinc program
```
  minizinc-viz model.mzn
```
A directory viz.out is then created with a lot of SVG files. In this directory there is a file aaa.html which can be see with a web browser (if it has support for SVG). My Firefox (under Linux) works very nice.

There is now also a tutorial to MiniZinc: An Introduction to MiniZinc (PDF)..
Jean-Charles Régin has started a blog Constraint Programming (I like the URL: http://cp-is-fun.blogspot.com).

(Thanks Pierre S for the tip.)
Jean-Charles Régin wrote about the Google OR/CP Solver: or-tools (Operations Research Tools developed at Google).

An interesting day, indeed.