Declarativity in modelling and problem solving

The paper discusses a new trend in the modelling software for combinatorial and mixed combinatorial-continuous decision problems. The trend, aiming at solving those problems by the simple activity of properly describing them, is best exemplified by a constantly inereasing spectrum of Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) languages. The first such language was Prolog. After a short historical survey concentrating mainly on Prolog, main characteristics of a modern, commercially successful CLP language - CHIP - are presented, discussed and illustrated. The CLP approach to problem solving is compared with traditional Operation Research approaches.