多用户博客系统外文翻译范文Word文档格式.docx

1、多用户博客系统外文翻译范文#外文文献资料#Introduction#As with many real life problems, the university course timetabling problem can be messy and complicated. Solving the university course timetabling problem involves many people communicating to try to achieve a timetable that meets a set of requirements and goals. As

2、 explained in Chapter 3, the literature on automated timetabling often takes a given timetabling problem and reduces it to a mathematical definition, which can then be solved. In reality, there is a lot more to a real world timetabling problem than what is represented in such a definition. The timet

3、abling process is long and consists of many stages before that of actually placing courses into timeslots. The first stage of solving a problem in OR involves a detailed study of the system, identifying specific problems, system constraints, and objective functions.#This chapter looks, in detail, at

4、 the timetabling problem at the faculty of applied science and engineering at the University of Toronto （APSC）. The process described is the one that took place in order to create the timetable for the much more complicated than what appears in a mathematical model. As well, a detailed analysis of a

5、 given problem is a step towards creating a problem definition. It allows one to identify all of the process issues, constraints, restrictions, and goals, thereby providing a base of information that may be included in a problem definition.#The undergraduate program at APSC consists of four years of

6、 study. There are 4000 students, over 1200 of which are first years. There are seven departments and nine degree programs totaling 79 POSts1. There are 219 faculty members, 12 buildings, and 80 lab rooms that are managed internally. The faculty uses a software scheduling package that is part of the

7、Syllabus Plus suite of scheduling products. In particular the software Course Planner （CP） is used to schedule, identify issues, and support decisions. CP is a software package that uses several heuristics when scheduling. 75% of timetables are delivered to the individual student conflict- free, bas

8、ed on program structure. In the following sections, we describe the goals that the timetable tries to achieve, the constraints involved, and the strategy, the process, used when creating the timetable. We then outline some problematic areas existing in the current process and highlight the areas whe

9、re IT could be helpful. Identifying areas where IT could be helpful should make the problem definition problem easier.#Constraints#In the timetabling domain, there are two types of constraints. Hard constraints are constraints that cannot be violated because if they were, the schedule would be infea

10、sible. Soft constraints, otherwise known as preferences, are there to make the timetable as good as possible. Fewer soft constraint violations mean that the schedule is better. In addition, in the University of Toronto example, there are certain situations that arise, due to the nature of the progra

11、m, that seriously constrain the schedule. Although these are constraints in a slightly different meaning, they will be referred to as constraining factors and they will be listed in this section as well.#Strategy#There is no written protocol that is followed when creating the timetable. This is beca

12、use every year is unique and different than the previous one. There is, however, a general strategy that is used. The basic steps that make up the scheduling process are the same each year. First is data acquisition. Second is deciding on the rollover strategy. The rollover strategy is deciding what

13、 part of the previous year#s schedule is kept and rolled over for the following year. After the rollover strategy is determined, each year#s timetable is scheduled, one at a time, starting with the first year program and finishing off with the fourth year.#The scheduling process really begins before

14、 the data acquisition stage, with the creation of the curriculum and calendar. However, this part of the process is not discussed here. In the following sections, each step in the above scheduling process will be looked at in more detail.#Problems in the Process#There are many areas of the process w

15、here there is a need for improvement. These problems range from technical issues such as there being too much data being entered manually, to communication issues, to political issues within the faculty. Some can benefit from an IT solution, and some cannot.#IT Solutions#There are several instances

16、during the process where automation would be helpful. The obvious one is that of the creation of the timetable. Software is currently used, but that software requires a lot of interaction and in a way it is merely a database that holds data and notifies the user when conflicts exist, while the timetable is actually created manually. The CP software can schedule automatically, but from experience, the created schedules are often quite far from ideal. CP often has a lot of difficulty