Model-based problem solving for university timetable validation and improvement

Abstract

Constraint satisfaction problems can be expressed very elegantly in state-based formal methods such as B. But can such specifications be directly used for solving real-life problems? In other words, can a formal model be more than a design artefact but also be used at runtime for inference and problem solving? We will try and answer this important question in the present paper with regard to the university timetabling problem. We report on an ongoing project to build a curriculum timetable validation tool where we use a formal model as the basis to validate timetables from a student’s perspective and to support incremental modification of timetables. In this article we describe the problem domain, the formalization in B and our approach to execute the formal model in a production system using ProB.