My personal project assigment for RMU

We want develop an software assistant to solve a "typical class shedule problem". The description of problem domain maybe like this:

• There are some "time slices", when studentes stay at classrom listen a professor. A simple model can be this We denote a slice with a mark start time, assume slices expand to next start.

    Time Marks:  8, 9, 10, 11, 12
  

• There area list of avaiable professors and subjects they can take

  Jhon  | Math, Biology, Computers
  Mary  | Computers, Idiom, Philosofy
  Bob   | History, Idiom, Philosofy

• There are some grades (or levels). A grade groups some courses with weekly work load

  Grade "First"

• Finally, there are, some classrooms when professors and their students meets at some time slice

"A"    | "First"
"B"    | "Second"

We want to give a "problem description for a schedule" to our assistant, and request it to "solve". The asistant outputs (some time later, of course) a shcedule arrangement for tipical week class calendar, one for each classrom. It loks like this:

Class Room "A"

  Jhon  | Math, Biology
  Mary  | Computers, Idiom
  Bob   | History, Philosofy

8   | Biology   | ...
9   | Computers | ...
 .  |     .     |   .
 .  |     .     |   .
 .  |     .     |   .


The solution must have some restrictions, like:

* "For a classrom and a course must have only one professor"
* "The amount of hours for a course in a classrom, must be equal to course's workload for the classrom grade"
* "A professor can be assigned to only a classrom for each time slice"

1. Develop a basic DSL to describe schedule problems. This DSL allow to write a file that the assistant can read as input.

2. The asistant build a solution using a simple backtracing strategy (like Prolog language), checking some restrictions for reject bad solutions. It stop at first good solution.

3. Use a highly modular design in order to allow future enhancements: solver-engines, ouputs formats, etc.

4. Good rspec test set

5. (Subgoal) support a "console mode". This can allow, in a future, adding / removing aidtional user defined restrictions in order to "refine" a solution.