We introduce a generalization of the spreadsheet paradigm, called Knowledgesheet, for solving a class of constraint satisfaction problems. The traditional spreadsheet paradigm is based on attaching arithmetic expressions to individual cells and then evaluating them; our Knowledgesheet interface instead allows finite domain constraints to be attached to individual cells that are then solved to obtain a solution. This extension provides an easy-to-use interface for solving a large class of constraint satisfaction problems -- those whose specification and solution conforms to a 2-dimensional structure, e.g., scheduling problems, timetabling problems, etc. A prototype for the Knowledgesheet has been developed and applied to solve many different types of problems.

This paper investigates a tabu search based hyper-heuristic for solving examination timetabling problems. The hyper-heuristic framework uses a tabu list to monitor the performance of a collection of low-level heuristics and then make tabu heuristics that have been applied too many times, thus allowing other heuristics to be applied. Experiments carried out on examination timetabling datasets from the literature show that this approach is able to produce good quality solutions.

. This work presents a constructive approach to the process of fixing a sequence of meetings between teachers and students in a prefixed period of time, satisfying a set of constraints of various types, known as school timetabling problem. The problem is modeled as a bi-objective problem used as a basis to construct feasible assignments of teachers to classes on specified timeslots. A new representation for the timetabling problem is presented. Pairs of teachers and classes are used to form conflict-free clusters for each timeslot. Teacher preferences and the process of avoiding undesirable waiting times between classes are explicitly considered as additional objectives. Computational results over real test problems are presented. 1 Introduction The timetabling problem consists in fixing a sequence of meetings between teachers and students in a prefixed period of time (typically a week), satisfying a set of constraints of various types. A large number of variants of the time...

this paper, we show that a suitable extension of disjunctive datalog (function-free disjunctive logic programs) allows us to represent school timetabling with various preferences in a natural and highly declarative way. In Section 2 we give basic syntax and semantics definitions of the language and its extension, which will then be used to represent school timetabling problems in Section 3. In 3.1 we will first describe the basic assignment problem. In 3.3 we will then augment this representation by various preferences using the same declarative framework. 2 Language Definition

timetabling problem – preliminary results

Local Search is an emerging paradigm for combinatorial search, which has been recently shown to be very effective for a large number of combinatorial problems.

The timetabling problem comes up every year in educational institutions, which has been solved by leveraging human resource for a long time. The problem is a special version of the optimization problems, it is computationally NP-hard. Although, there are some attempts to apply computer based methods, their use is limited by the problem's complexity, therefore Genetic Algorithms were applied, because they are robust enough in such a huge problem space. In this paper a new and more flexible timetable representation, the set representation is introduced which meets the demands better than former ones. The proposed method proved to be efficient in real life application of a secondary school, as well. I.

This paper presents a project that aims at applying CP technology to GGS timetabling. Models are based on global constraints and optimality criteria guide search. Empirical evaluation relies on artificial problems that are very similar to real GGS timetabling problems.

In this paper, we show how school timetabling problems with preferences originating from didactical, organisational and personal considerations can be represented in a highly declarative and natural way, using an extension of disjunctive datalog by strong and weak (integrity) constraints.