Soft constraints for KnowLang

Constraints are widely used in information technologies and research elds such as programming languages, arti cial in- telligence, databases, information security, web technologies, etc. In this paper, we present our preliminary steps of using soft constraints for knowledge representation. We integrate soft constraints in KnowLang, a formal language for knowl- edge representation in self-adaptive systems. KnowLang al- lows for e cient and comprehensive knowledge structuring where ontologies are integrated with rules and Bayesian net- works. The approach targets at a technique where knowl- edge can be represented as special restrictive rules that may require full or partial satisfaction, i.e., restrictions are rep- resented as some sort of good-to-have properties.