Declarative modelling of parameter setting

Abstract: The parameter setting problem is part of a complex, automated process for customizing Scania's products; primarily trucks and buses. The problem is modelled as a stateless, acyclic graph of pure functions and variables. A subset of a deterministic, concurrent, demand-driven, declarative programming model is implemented under the Microsoft .NET framework. The implementation is evaluated based on suitability for solving the parameter setting problem, computational performance and general applicability within the organization. It is concluded that the model reduces the complexity of the parameter setting problem, mainly due to demand-driven (lazy) execution. The implementation scales as expected on sequential programs in time and memory with respect to input size. Parallel programs benefit partly from parallelism but bottlenecks in the .NET framework seem to limit the speedup. The general applicability of the programming model within the organization is potentially high and there are many extensions that can be added in the future, such as constraint programming.