ENGINEST releases POEM 3. POEM is a programming environment for the NCL Natural Constraint Language.

       The NCL language is a description language in conventional mathematical logic for modeling and solving constraint satisfaction problems. It differs from other declarative languages: It models problems naturally in a simplified form of first-order logic with quantifiers, Boolean logic, numeric constraints, set operations and logical functions; it solves problems by mixed set programming over the mixed domain of real numbers, integers, Booleans, dates/times, references, and in particular sets.

        Besides strengthened algorithmic power, the new version presents additional features:- Logical function allows the definition of user functions like conventional functions such as cosine (\cos) and sum (\sum). What is important is that it enables recursive definition and it can also encapsulate controls such as input, output, query and even a whole solver in a logical manner. Function supports more modular programming and more efficient iterative optimization.- Enriched message system provides in-depth information (info, warning, suggestion, exception) to help programmers model.
- Enhanced debugging facilities offer more convenient methods on modeling and diagnosing to help programmers debug.These include expectation constraints, programmed break, custom messages, variable brewers and constraint debuggers.

        A book "The NCL Natural Constraint Language" is published by Springer (www.springer.com/computer/swe/book/978-3-642-23844-4).

Moreover, the POEM environment also integrates a visualization script which supports basic graphics, Gantt chart for date/time management, Map for geographic information management, Histogram for statistics, Data for data management, and Script for interaction management.

      To support deploying solutions, ComPoem (a POEM component) and PoemServer (an application server) are also available.

POEM can be used:- by customers in areas as diverse as logistics (supply chain), manufacturing, human resources, civil aviation, railway, telecom, aeronautics, astronautics, electronics, electricity. - by developers in software engineering, operations research, logic programming, constraint programming, artificial intelligence, etc.- by universities for teaching in mathematical logic, programming language, compilation theory, combinatorial optimization, logic programming, constraint programming, operations research, industrial engineering, etc.