4.2. Differences from the 2005 report
The second edition has more than 1300 pages of new content. The slots describing explicitly the meaning of a global constraint (e.g., the slots Graph model and Automaton) were moved to the last part of the description. This was motivated by the fact that most users want first to get the informal description of a global constraint (e.g., the slots Purpose and Example). Effort was not only devoted to the introduction of new constraints but also to a better description of multiple aspects like:
The slot Symmetries describes a set of mapping that preserve the solution to a constraint (see Section 2.2.5).
The slot Reformulation provides reformulation of a global constraint as a conjunction of constraints (see Section 2.5).
The slot Systems gives links to concrete constraint systems.
The slots See also and Keywords were redesigned in order to respectively indicate why we point to a given constraint (see Section 2.6) and to group together keywords by meta-keywords (see Section 3.6).
In addition to the slots Graph model and Automaton that respectively describe the meaning of a global constraint in terms of graph properties and automaton, we have introduced the slot Logic in order to describe some geometrical constraints with first order formulae (see keyword Logic).
Finally, an evaluator was provided for most global constraints.