ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA)

Session 2009-2010

THE TIME TABLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Our first experience of project has been successfully, thanks to the

support staff of many friends & colleagues with gratitude. We wish to

acknowledge all of them. However, we wish to make special mention of the

following.

First of all we are thankful of our project guide Mr. AASIM ZAFAR

under whose guidance we were able to complete our project. We are

wholeheartedly thankful to him for giving us his value able time & attention

& for providing us a systematic way for completing our project in time.

We must make special mention of MRS. SAJIDA KHATOON and

MR. SUNIL KUMAR SHARMA, our project in charge for their co-

operation & assistance in solving a technical problem. We would thank to

our chairman Dr. M.U.BOKHARI & all lab maintenance staff for providing

us assistance in various h/w & s/w problem encountered during course of our

project.

We are also very thankful to respective timetable in charge sir MR. A.

R. FARIDI who gave us an opportunity to present this project.

MUHAMMAD JISHAN

INDEX

SERIAL

NO.

CHAPTER NAME

PAGE

NO.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

14.

INTRODUCTION

Introduction to Project

Introduction to Technology Used

SYSTEM ANALYSIS

CONSTRAINTS

SOFT CONSTRAINTS

HARD CONSTRAINTS

END USER OF SYSTEM

WHY DECIDED TO DEVELOP THIS SYSTEM

UML DIAGRAM

ER DIAGRAM

DATABASE DESIGN

COMPLETE SYSTEM MODULE DESCRIPTION

REPORT GENERATED BY THE SYSTEM

INSTALLATION AND USER MANUAL

LIMITATION AND POSSIBLE ENHANCEMENT

REFERENCES

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION OF PROJECT

The problem is to design and implement an algorithm to create a semester course time

table by assigning time-slots and rooms to a given set of courses to be run that semester

under given constraints. The constraints include avoiding clashes of time-slots and

rooms, assigning appropriate rooms and appropriate no. of slots and contact hours to the

courses etc

Although most of the college administrative work has been computerized, the lecture-

timetable scheduling is still mostly done manually due to its technical difficulties. The

manual scheduling of lecture-timetable requires considerable time and efforts. The

lecture-timetable scheduling is a constraint satisfaction problem in which we find an

optimal solution that satisfies the given set of constraints.

The college lecture-timetabling problem asks us to find some time slots and classrooms

which satisfy the constraints imposed on offered courses, instructors, classrooms and so

on. Therefore, the variables to be instantiated are time slots and classrooms of offered

courses. Since the problem is a combinatorial optimization problem belonging to NP-

hard class, the computation time for timetabling tends to grow exponentially as the

number of variables increase. There have been a number of approaches made in the past

decades to the problem of constructing timetables for colleges and schools. Timetabling

problems may be solved by different methods inherited either from operations research

such as graph coloring, mathematical programming, local search procedures such as

tabu search and simulated annealing, genetic algorithms or from backtracking-based

constraint satisfaction manipulation.

We have formulated the method for developing effective and practical timetabling

algorithm [3] which is capable of taking care of both hard and soft constraints using

simplified version of iterative forward search technique [7] based on priority. We

primarily focused on developing algorithm, which is easy to implement without

compromising on its effectiveness and performance.

INTRODUCTION TO TECHNOLOGY USED

Features of Visual Basic.NET:

Visual Basic.NET is a flexible, high level, object-oriented programming

language.

Visual Basic.NET includes certain low level features that are normally

available only in assembly or machine language.

Visual Basic.NET is widely available, commercial interpreter are available for

most personal computer, mini computers and main frames.

Visual Basic.NET is largely machined independent. Programs written in Visual

Basic.NET are easily ported from one computer to another.

Your programs interface may include the familiar controls that window users

already know how to operate-such as command buttons, option list, text boxes and

scroll bars.

With just a few mouse actions, you can add any combination of these controls

to a program.

As a result design tasks that used to require many hours of detailed

programming efforts can how be completed in minutes.

The S/Ws developed in Visual Basic.NET are user friendly and good looking

In Visual Basic.NET you can quickly design the visual elements of any new

programming project.

Chapter 3

CONSTRAINTS

Constraints are divided into two parts:

HARD CONSTRAINTS

C1: A classroom is not assigned to more than one lecture at the same time.

C2: An instructor cannot teach more than one class at the same time.

C3: Courses for the same year-session students of a department cannot take

place at the same time.

C4: The classroom for a course should have enough capacity to take students

registered in the course.

C5: The classroom should be well equipped with required facilities for the

classes

SOFT CONSTRAINTS

C6: The lectures are not assigned to time slots, which are in the

instructor’s forbidden time zones.

C7: Instructors‟ daily lecture hours should be restricted to be within the

allowed maximum hours.

C8: As far as possible, classes are scheduled in the instructor’s preferred

time zones.

C9: A lunch/dinner break must be scheduled.

C10: The theory courses are scheduled on Monday and Tuesday, and the

practical courses are scheduled on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

C11: If possible, the lecture hours for a course should be scheduled

consecutively.

C12: As far as possible, classes should be scheduled in their corresponding

departments exclusive-use classrooms.

C13: The classrooms should be allocated in a manner to minimize the

distances between adjacent classes‟ classrooms.

It is desirable for timetables to satisfy all hard and soft constraints.

However, it is usually difficult to meet all these constraints. Any hard constraint

must not be violated in any case, but some soft constraints can be sacrificed to

find feasible timetables.

Chapter 4

END USER OF SYSTEM

Our System is developed keeping in mind that the following end users can

use it in easy manner.

1. ADMINISTRATOR

2. INSTRUCTORS

PROFESSOR

READER

LECTURER

3. STUDENT

INTERNAL

EXTERNAL

Chapter 5

WHY DECIDED TO DEVELOP THIS SYSTEM

The broad objective that I set myself was to develop a generic timetable evaluator,

which would allow the user in the simplest way possible to define both the situation that

the timetable had been developed for, and the characteristics of a good timetable. Such

an evaluator could have a number of possible uses:

To automatically determine the quality of and to give feedback on timetables

generated by an automatic solver or otherwise.

To integrate any number of timetables.

To develop applications for the manual building of timetables that can give feedback

and make suggestions to the user as the timetable is built.

To potentially be used as part of an automatic solver.

As demonstrated in the previous section, any timetabling problem of real world

Proportions are likely to have considerable complexity.

For this reason, creating a reliable automatic solver which requires no manual

Intervention is a very difficult problem, and most organizations do not have such a

solution.

Instead, most timetables are created manually by expert administrators who have deep

knowledge of the requirements of all parties involved.

I believe that a primary use of an evaluator for such timetable would be to give

assistance to the manual creating and modifying of timetables. The human makes every

decision, but can be guided as to what s/he can and cannot do, and can be given

suggestions as to what is the better thing to do.

Chapter 6

UML DIAGRAMS

USER/ADMIN

USERNAME/PASSWORD

DATABASELOGIN

CHECK VALIDATION

VERIFY USER

UNSUCCESSFULL

VALIDATION

ERROR MESSAGE

MDI SCREEN

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM

ADMINISTRATOR

REQUEST ADD FUNCTION

DATABASEFRONT END

MESSAGE (DATA IS SAVED)

DISPLAY ADD FUNCTION

INFORMATION FILLED

SENDS FIELDS

DATA VALIDATION

UNSUCCESSFULL

SUCCESSFULL

ERROR MESSAGE

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM(ADD TEACHER)

ADMINISTRATOR

DATABASE

MESSAGE (DATA IS DELETED)

DISPLAY DELETE FUNCTION

ENTER ID OR NAME

SENDS FIELDS

DATA VALIDATION

UNSUCCESSFULL

SUCCESSFULL

ERROR MESSAGE

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM(DELETE TEACHER)

REQUEST DELETE FUNCTION

FRONT END

ADMINISTRATOR

DATABASE

MESSAGE (DATA IS DELETED)

ENTER TEACHER,ROOM

SENDS FIELDS

DATA VALIDATION

UNSUCCESSFULL

SUCCESSFULL

ERROR MESSAGE

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM(ADD TIMETABLE)

FRONT END

SELECT COURSE

SELECT SLOT

AND COURSE

Chapter 7 ER DIAGRAM

1

1

N

1

N N

MID

SID

INSTRUCTOR

COURSE

ROOM

NAME ID

TYPE LECT/

WEAK

CCODE

DE

NAME

CID

INTAKE

ID LOC. CAPACITY

ASSIGN TO

TIME TABLE

TEACHER

COURSE

ROOM

Chapter 8 DATABSE DESIGN

All the tables used in the system are normalized.

TIMETABLE SID MID TEACHER COURSE ROOM

TIMETABLE1 SID MID TEACHER

TIMETABLE2 SID MID ROOM

COURSE CCODE NAME CID LEC/WEEK

INSTRUCTOR ID NAME QUALIFICATION TYPE LEC/WEEK

ROOM ID LOCATION INTAKE

Chapter 9 COMPLETE SYSTEM MODULE DESCRIPTION

Chapter 10 REPORT GENERATED BY THE SYSTEM

Chapter 11 INSTALLATION AND USER MANUAL

1. Insert the Timetable CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive. 2. Open the folder named set up 3. Double click the script file named “main”

4. Give your oracle user id and password. 5. Follow the instructions of the installation program, which will automatically start on your computer. 3. The first thing you can choose is the language. Select one of the offered options and click on Next. 4. The installation program will then welcome you with the following start-up screen

The installation program will ask you for a few necessary details. Every time it will offer a default option. If you want to change it for any reason, you can do that in the respective installation step. There are control buttons at the bottom of the dialog box: Back: Returns to the previous step. Use it when you want to change existing data. Next: Moves to the next step. Cancel: Cancels the installation. If you interrupt the installation for any reason, you can run it again as described. Default options are suitable for most computers.

The installation program will offer C:\TTMS as the default directory. If you want to change it, click on Browse… and find the required folder. When you have selected the folder, click on Next. 6. The installation program will then ask for the program folder name and it will offer TTMS. Program folders are used for starting programs. They are accessible through Start/Programs. If you want to enter a different name, type it in or select an already existing folder from the list. If you are satisfied with the name, click on Next. 7. Wait until the program files are copied on the disk and program groups are created. 8. Finish the installation by clicking on Finish. 9. After a successful installation, the program will create the folder TTMS and will place into it a shortcut for starting the program. It will also place TTMS icon on the desktop.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT:

PENTIUM IV processor or above.

Min. 256 mb of RAM

ORACLE should be installed.

Microsoft’s .NET framework shoud be installed.

Operating System: windows 2000 or above.

Limitation Of The System Timetable Management System was created for the use of FCSIT. All the basic

Requirements of a timetable such as timetable for student and lecturers, master

timetable for lecturers, enquiry for free classes and booking for the free classes are

available. The main limitation with Timetable Management System is that it is not

linking to the current student database. This is because if the system connects to the

current database the requirement for the hardware and software is higher.

Besides that, another limitation is that the FCSIT must have a permanent administrator

to maintain the database in the system. Administrator has to key in the data and lecturer

for the first time registration.

Conclusions and Future Work

Our approach of developing timetabling system was proved successful and

practical as well as it demonstrated its suitability for solving colleges’

lecture-course timetabling problem. We have also shown that how we can fit

our timetabling system as Rich Internet Application. From this timetabling

system, we are able to obtain useful information for future work. Further

development includes expanding algorithm for solving timetabling problem

of more that one department at same time. Also improving problem

modeling and search technique, reducing execution time and enhancing

graphical user interface. More research is needed to complete our interactive,

automatic timetabling system. The method, techniques and concepts

developed will be tested on more datasets and application.

References

The Timetable Management System can be further enhanced by adding the following:-

_ Linking to the ISIS database. So that, the University has one reference database.

_ with the linking to ISIS database, the task for the administrator is less. This is

Because the student data is taken from the ISIS database.

Chapter 14 REFERENCES

1. PL/SQL IVAN BAYROSS

2. VB.NET COMPLETE REFERENCE

SHAPIRO

3. BLACK BOOK VB.NET

4. INTERNET RESOURCES

your comments and regards are welcome!

Happy timetabling!!!

Muhammad Zeeshan