An open interactive timetabling tool

Abstract

This article deals with the analysis and design of an interactive decision support System for timetable management. This tool will be able to take hierarchical data organization into account and to maintain coherence of the constraints on this data. Our research which has led to the creation of the VT tool1 has two aims. The first aim is to provide an open, generic tool which can be developed in many different ways. In order to achieve this aim, we have used an object-oriented approach and we have defined object classes for the modelling of the timetabling problem. The second aim is to analyse the needs in timetable manipulation and to provide a generic organization so that the tool can be used in many situations. To achieve this aim, both user-based and automated techniques are used. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.