Unified Configuration Knowledge Representation Using Weight Constraint Rules

In this paper we present an approach to formally defining different conceptualizations of configuration knowledge, modeling configuration knowledge, and implementing the configuration task on the basis of the formalization. The approach is based on a weight constraint rule language and its efficient implementation designed for representing different aspects of configuration knowledge uniformly and compactly. The use of the language to represent configuration knowledge is demonstrated through formalizing a unified configuration ontology. The language allows a compact and simple formalization. The complexity of the configuration task defined by the formalization is shown to be NP-complete.