# 1. Getting started

The main entries you may consult if you want to have a first look to the catalogue are:

• To get an idea of how global constraint arguments are described look at Section 2.1.

• To search in the catalogue look at Section 3.3.

• To search a constraint from a keyword look at Section 3.7.

• To get an idea how keywords are structured look at Section 3.6.

• To know available semantic links between constraints look at Section 2.5.

• To get through the core global constraints look at the keyword core.

• To see how constraints symmetries are described look at Section 2.1.5.

• To get an idea of general filtering techniques look at the meta -keyword filtering and more specifically to the entries Berge-acyclic constraint network, constructive disjunction, flow and sweep. To get the notion of consistency achieved by a filtering algorithm look at the keywords arc-consistency and bound-consistency.

• To get an idea of modelling techniques and of modelling exercises look at the meta -keywords modelling and modelling exercises.

• To get and idea of reformulations of global constraints look at Section 2.4.

• To get an idea of general ways to explicitly represent the meaning of global constraints look at (a) Section 2.2 for the graph property based description, (b) Section 2.3 for the automaton based description, (c) the reference [CarlssonBeldiceanuMartin08]) for the logical based description (e.g., see the Logic slot of $\mathrm{𝚖𝚎𝚎𝚝}_\mathrm{𝚜𝚋𝚘𝚡𝚎𝚜}$).

• To get an idea of the meta -data used for describing a constraint look at Section 4.4.1 for the facts and Section 4.4.2 for the XML schema.

• To get the correspondence of global constraints of the catalogue with concrete constraint systems, such as Choco, Gecode, JaCoP, or SICStus look at Appendix Systems.