Relational Construction of Specific Timetables

Rudolf Berghammer () and Britta Kehden ()
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Rudolf Berghammer: Universität Kiel
Britta Kehden: Universität Kiel

A chapter in Operations Research Proceedings 2007, 2008, pp 397-402 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract We use relation algebra to model an abstract timetabling problem and to compute solutions. The problem was posed to us by the administration of our university and stems from the current change from the classical German university education system to the undergraduate-graduate system. In particular with regard to the undergraduate education of secondary school teachers this change causes some difficulties. A very serious one is to enable a three years duration of study without to abolish Germany’s tradition of (at least) two different fields of study. Exactly this demand is the background of our specific university timetabling problem. We will show how to transform an informal problem description into a formal relation-algebraic model. Using it as starting point, we then develop an algorithm for obtaining solutions. In essence the algorithm is given by a relation-algebraic expression that immediately can be translated into the programming language of the RelView tool. Because of the moderate size of the timetabling problem and the very efficient BDD-implementation of relations in RelView, this even allows to compute all existing solutions of the problem or to message that no solution exists. Due to space restrictions we omit many details. This material will be included in [3].

Keywords: Maximum Clique; Computer Algebra System; Relation Algebra; Undergraduate Education; Search Point (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77903-2_61

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