Comments: File resides on Hadar. ContactPerson: bharat@cse.buffalo.edu; tambay@cse.buffalo.edu Remote host: pollux.cse.buffalo.edu Remote ident: tambay ### Begin Citation ### Do not delete this line ### %R 2000-05 %U /u1/csgrad/tambay/constraints/Drafts/MASPLAS2000/paper.ps %A Jayaraman, Bharat %A Tambay, Pallavi Y %T Constrained Objects for Modeling Complex Systems %D April 1, 2000 %I Department of Computer Science and Engineering, SUNY Buffalo %K Object-Oriented Modeling, Conditional and Quantified Constraints, Preferences, Constraint Solving, Engineering Design, Document Layout %Y Languages %X The goal of this research is to develop a programming language and execution environment for modeling complex engineering entities. We propose to model complex systems using a compositional approach. The building blocks in this approach are objects whose internal states must obey a set of invariants, or constraints. When such objects are aggregated to form a complex object, their internal states might further have to satisfy interface constraints. This paradigm of objects is referred to as constrained objects, and may be regarded as a declarative form of object-oriented programming. We propose to extend earlier work by providing a richer language, called Cob, for specifying constrained objects: We support both the notion of conditional constraints, preferences, and logic variables at the modeling level, and the computational model provides constraint satisfaction, optimization, and incremental recomputation. Cob will be an expressive tool for applications arising in engineering, information and organizational modeling.