| Abstract: | We argue that formal methods such as B can be used to conveniently express a wide
range of constraint satisfaction problems. We also show that some problems can be solved
quite eectively by existing formal methods tools such as Alloy or ProB. We illustrate our
claim on several examples. Our approach is particularly interesting when a high assurance
of correctness is required. Indeed, validation and double checking of solutions is available
for certain formal methods tools and formal proof can be applied to establish important
properties or provide unambiguous semantics to problem specications. The experiments
also provide interesting insights about the eectiveness of existing formal method tools,
and highlight interesting avenues for future improvement.
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