METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING RELEVANCE OF ASSIGNMENTS IN COMBINATORIAL MODELS

An apparatus and computer-implemented method for determining relevance of assignments in combinatorial models, the method comprising: receiving an attribute collection, the attribute collection comprising one or more attributes and one or more possible values for each of attributes; receiving pone or more restrictions, each restriction indicating one or more values for one or more attributes; receiving one or more assignments comprising one or more assigned values for one or more of the attributes; and determining whether the assignment is legal, illegal or partially-legal, wherein an illegal assignment is an assignment which violates a constraint by itself; a legal assignment is an assignment which is not illegal, and for every extension thereof which is illegal, a combination of values assigned to other attributes violates a constraint by itself; and a partially-legal assignment is an assignment which is neither legal nor illegal.