Software Engineering

Introduction Planning a wedding involves many logistical challenges, but one of the most delicate tasks is seating arrangements. A wedding is a mix of family members, lifelong friends, and work colleagues, each with their own histories, relationships, and preferences. Some guests want to sit together, others should be kept apart, and family members often have priority seating near the married couple. A manually crafted seating chart can lead to compromises, overlooked conflicts, and unnecessary stress. Instead, we can turn to Constraint Programming (CP), a powerful approach that finds an optimal arrangement based on defined rules and preferences. ...

In the ever-evolving world of distributed computing, consensus and federation protocols play a critical role in ensuring integrity, reliability, and coordination. However, they serve fundamentally different purposes: consensus protocols are designed to synchronize state across distributed nodes within a system, while federation protocols facilitate communication between independent systems while preserving autonomy. Context The CAP Theorem The CAP theorem, formulated by Eric Brewer, states that distributed systems can only guarantee two of three properties: ...

Introduction The Organization Decision Record (ODR) framework provides a structured approach to decision-making by clearly defining context, constraints, and requirements. However, as decision complexity increases, manually evaluating all possible options becomes impractical. Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP) offer a way to systematically optimize decision-making by leveraging constraint-solving algorithms. In this article, we’ll explore how to convert an ODR decision into a CSP problem and implement it using Timefold, an open-source optimization engine. ...