<I-N-OVA> and <I-N-CA> - Representing Plans and other Synthesised Artifacts as a Set of Constraints

This paper presents an approach to representing and manipulating plans and other synthesised artifacts in the form of a set of constraints. The (Issues - Nodes - Orderings/Variables/Auxiliary) constraints model is used to characterise plans and processes. The more general (Issues - Nodes - Critical/Auxiliary) constraints model can be used for wider applications in design, configuration and other tasks which can be characterised as the synthesis and maintenance of an artifact or product. The and constraint models are intended to support a number of different uses: - for automatic manipulation of plans and other synthesised artifacts and to act as an ontology to underpin such use; - as a common basis for human communication about plans and other synthesised artifacts; - as a target for principled and reliable acquisition of plans, models and product information; - to support formal reasoning about plans and other synthesised artifacts.