Developing solvers with Red Hat build of OptaPlanner in Red Hat Process Automation Manager

A planning problem has an optimal goal, based on limited resources and under specific constraints. Optimal goals can be any number of things, such as:

The ability to achieve these goals relies on the number of resources available. For example, the following resources might be limited:

You must also take into account the specific constraints related to these resources, such as the number of hours a person works, their ability to use certain machines, or compatibility between pieces of equipment.

Red Hat build of OptaPlanner helps Java programmers solve constraint satisfaction problems efficiently. It combines optimization heuristics and metaheuristics with efficient score calculation.

The provided use cases are probably NP-complete or NP-hard, which means the following statements apply:

The implication is that solving your problem is probably harder than you anticipated, because the two common techniques do not suffice:

By using advanced optimization algorithms, OptaPlanner finds a good solution in reasonable time for such planning problems.

A planning problem has a number of solutions.

Several categories of solutions are:

Counterintuitively, the number of possible solutions is huge (if calculated correctly), even with a small data set.

In the examples provided in the planner-engine distribution folder, most instances have a large number of possible solutions. As there is no guaranteed way to find the optimal solution, any implementation is forced to evaluate at least a subset of all those possible solutions.

OptaPlanner supports several optimization algorithms to efficiently wade through that incredibly large number of possible solutions.

Depending on the use case, some optimization algorithms perform better than others, but it is impossible to know in advance. Using OptaPlanner, you can switch the optimization algorithm by changing the solver configuration in a few lines of XML or code.

Usually, a planning problem has minimum two levels of constraints:

Some problems also have positive constraints:

Some basic problems only have hard constraints. Some problems have three or more levels of constraints, for example, hard, medium, and soft constraints.

These constraints define the score calculation (otherwise known as the fitness function) of a planning problem. Each solution of a planning problem is graded with a score. With OptaPlanner, score constraints are written in an object oriented language such as Java, or in Drools rules.

This type of code is flexible and scalable.

Several Red Hat build of OptaPlanner examples are shipped with Red Hat Process Automation Manager. You can review the code for examples and modify it as necessary to suit your needs.

Some of the OptaPlanner examples solve problems that are presented in academic contests. The Contest column in the following table lists the contests. It also identifies an example as being either realistic or unrealistic for the purpose of a contest. A realistic contest is an official, independent contest that meets the following standards:

Realistic contests provide an objective comparison of OptaPlanner with competitive software and academic research.

Place n number of queens on an n sized chessboard so that no two queens can attack each other. The most common n queens puzzle is the eight queens puzzle, with n = 8:

Constraints:

This documentation heavily uses the four queens puzzle as the primary example.

A proposed solution could be:

Figure 3.1. A wrong solution for the four queens puzzle

The above solution is wrong because queens A1 and B0 can attack each other (so can queens B0 and D0). Removing queen B0 would respect the "no two queens can attack each other" constraint, but would break the "place n queens" constraint.

Below is a correct solution:

Figure 3.2. A correct solution for the Four queens puzzle

All the constraints have been met, so the solution is correct.

Note that most n queens puzzles have multiple correct solutions. We will focus on finding a single correct solution for a specific n, not on finding the number of possible correct solutions for a specific n.

4queens   has   4 queens with a search space of    256.
8queens   has   8 queens with a search space of   10^7.
16queens  has  16 queens with a search space of  10^19.
32queens  has  32 queens with a search space of  10^48.
64queens  has  64 queens with a search space of 10^115.
256queens has 256 queens with a search space of 10^616.

The implementation of the n queens example has not been optimized because it functions as a beginner example. Nevertheless, it can easily handle 64 queens. With a few changes it has been shown to easily handle 5000 queens and more.

3.6.1. Domain model for N queens

This example uses the domain model to solve the four queens problem.

• Creating a Domain Model

  A good domain model will make it easier to understand and solve your planning problem.

  This is the domain model for the n queens example:

  public class Column {
  
      private int index;
  
      // ... getters and setters
  }

  public class Row {
  
      private int index;
  
      // ... getters and setters
  }

  public class Queen {
  
      private Column column;
      private Row row;
  
      public int getAscendingDiagonalIndex() {...}
      public int getDescendingDiagonalIndex() {...}
  
      // ... getters and setters
  }

• Calculating the Search Space.

  A Queen instance has a Column (for example: 0 is column A, 1 is column B, …​) and a Row (its row, for example: 0 is row 0, 1 is row 1, …​).

  The ascending diagonal line and the descending diagonal line can be calculated based on the column and the row.

  The column and row indexes start from the upper left corner of the chessboard.

  public class NQueens {
  
      private int n;
      private List<Column> columnList;
      private List<Row> rowList;
  
      private List<Queen> queenList;
  
      private SimpleScore score;
  
      // ... getters and setters
  }

• Finding the Solution

  A single NQueens instance contains a list of all Queen instances. It is the Solution implementation which will be supplied to, solved by, and retrieved from the Solver.

Notice that in the four queens example, the NQueens getN() method will always return four.

Figure 3.3. A solution for Four Queens

Table 3.2. Details of the solution in the domain model

	columnIndex	rowIndex	ascendingDiagonalIndex (columnIndex + rowIndex)	descendingDiagonalIndex (columnIndex - rowIndex)
A1	0	1	1 (**)	-1
B0	1	0 (*)	1 (**)	1
C2	2	2	4	0
D0	3	0 (*)	3	3

When two queens share the same column, row or diagonal line, such as (*) and (**), they can attack each other.

For information about this example, see Red Hat build of OptaPlanner quick start guides.

Given a list of cities, find the shortest tour for a salesman that visits each city exactly once.

The problem is defined by Wikipedia. It is one of the most intensively studied problems in computational mathematics. Yet, in the real world, it is often only part of a planning problem, along with other constraints, such as employee shift rostering constraints.

dj38     has  38 cities with a search space of   10^43.
europe40 has  40 cities with a search space of   10^46.
st70     has  70 cities with a search space of   10^98.
pcb442   has 442 cities with a search space of  10^976.
lu980    has 980 cities with a search space of 10^2504.

Every week the tennis club has four teams playing round robin against each other. Assign those four spots to the teams fairly.

Hard constraints:

Medium constraints:

Soft constraints:

munich-7teams has 7 teams, 18 days, 12 unavailabilityPenalties and 72 teamAssignments with a search space of 10^60.

Figure 3.4. Domain model

Assign each meeting to a starting time and a room. Meetings have different durations.

Hard constraints:

Medium constraints:

Soft constraints:

50meetings-160timegrains-5rooms  has  50 meetings, 160 timeGrains and 5 rooms with a search space of 10^145.
100meetings-320timegrains-5rooms has 100 meetings, 320 timeGrains and 5 rooms with a search space of 10^320.
200meetings-640timegrains-5rooms has 200 meetings, 640 timeGrains and 5 rooms with a search space of 10^701.
400meetings-1280timegrains-5rooms has 400 meetings, 1280 timeGrains and 5 rooms with a search space of 10^1522.
800meetings-2560timegrains-5rooms has 800 meetings, 2560 timeGrains and 5 rooms with a search space of 10^3285.

Schedule each lecture into a timeslot and into a room.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

The problem is defined by the International Timetabling Competition 2007 track 3.

comp01 has 24 teachers,  14 curricula,  30 courses, 160 lectures, 30 periods,  6 rooms and   53 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^360.
comp02 has 71 teachers,  70 curricula,  82 courses, 283 lectures, 25 periods, 16 rooms and  513 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^736.
comp03 has 61 teachers,  68 curricula,  72 courses, 251 lectures, 25 periods, 16 rooms and  382 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^653.
comp04 has 70 teachers,  57 curricula,  79 courses, 286 lectures, 25 periods, 18 rooms and  396 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^758.
comp05 has 47 teachers, 139 curricula,  54 courses, 152 lectures, 36 periods,  9 rooms and  771 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^381.
comp06 has 87 teachers,  70 curricula, 108 courses, 361 lectures, 25 periods, 18 rooms and  632 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^957.
comp07 has 99 teachers,  77 curricula, 131 courses, 434 lectures, 25 periods, 20 rooms and  667 unavailable period constraints with a search space of 10^1171.
comp08 has 76 teachers,  61 curricula,  86 courses, 324 lectures, 25 periods, 18 rooms and  478 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^859.
comp09 has 68 teachers,  75 curricula,  76 courses, 279 lectures, 25 periods, 18 rooms and  405 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^740.
comp10 has 88 teachers,  67 curricula, 115 courses, 370 lectures, 25 periods, 18 rooms and  694 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^981.
comp11 has 24 teachers,  13 curricula,  30 courses, 162 lectures, 45 periods,  5 rooms and   94 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^381.
comp12 has 74 teachers, 150 curricula,  88 courses, 218 lectures, 36 periods, 11 rooms and 1368 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^566.
comp13 has 77 teachers,  66 curricula,  82 courses, 308 lectures, 25 periods, 19 rooms and  468 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^824.
comp14 has 68 teachers,  60 curricula,  85 courses, 275 lectures, 25 periods, 17 rooms and  486 unavailable period constraints with a search space of  10^722.

Figure 3.5. Domain model

Assign each process to a machine. All processes already have an original (unoptimized) assignment. Each process requires an amount of each resource (such as CPU or RAM). This is a more complex version of the Cloud Balancing example.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

The problem is defined by the Google ROADEF/EURO Challenge 2012.

Figure 3.6. Value proposition

model_a1_1 has  2 resources,  1 neighborhoods,   4 locations,    4 machines,    79 services,   100 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of     10^60.
model_a1_2 has  4 resources,  2 neighborhoods,   4 locations,  100 machines,   980 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^2000.
model_a1_3 has  3 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  25 locations,  100 machines,   216 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^2000.
model_a1_4 has  3 resources, 50 neighborhoods,  50 locations,   50 machines,   142 services,  1000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^1698.
model_a1_5 has  4 resources,  2 neighborhoods,   4 locations,   12 machines,   981 services,  1000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^1079.
model_a2_1 has  3 resources,  1 neighborhoods,   1 locations,  100 machines,  1000 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^2000.
model_a2_2 has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  25 locations,  100 machines,   170 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^2000.
model_a2_3 has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  25 locations,  100 machines,   129 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^2000.
model_a2_4 has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  25 locations,   50 machines,   180 services,  1000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^1698.
model_a2_5 has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  25 locations,   50 machines,   153 services,  1000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of   10^1698.
model_b_1  has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  10 locations,  100 machines,  2512 services,  5000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^10000.
model_b_2  has 12 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  10 locations,  100 machines,  2462 services,  5000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^10000.
model_b_3  has  6 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  10 locations,  100 machines, 15025 services, 20000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^40000.
model_b_4  has  6 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  50 locations,  500 machines,  1732 services, 20000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^53979.
model_b_5  has  6 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  10 locations,  100 machines, 35082 services, 40000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^80000.
model_b_6  has  6 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  50 locations,  200 machines, 14680 services, 40000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of  10^92041.
model_b_7  has  6 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  50 locations, 4000 machines, 15050 services, 40000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of 10^144082.
model_b_8  has  3 resources,  5 neighborhoods,  10 locations,  100 machines, 45030 services, 50000 processes and 0 balancePenalties with a search space of 10^100000.
model_b_9  has  3 resources,  5 neighborhoods, 100 locations, 1000 machines,  4609 services, 50000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of 10^150000.
model_b_10 has  3 resources,  5 neighborhoods, 100 locations, 5000 machines,  4896 services, 50000 processes and 1 balancePenalties with a search space of 10^184948.

Figure 3.7. Domain model

Using a fleet of vehicles, pick up the objects of each customer and bring them to the depot. Each vehicle can service multiple customers, but it has a limited capacity.

Besides the basic case (CVRP), there is also a variant with time windows (CVRPTW).

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

The capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) and its time-windowed variant (CVRPTW) are defined by the VRP web.

Figure 3.8. Value proposition

belgium-n50-k10             has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   49 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-n100-k10            has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   99 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-n500-k20            has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  499 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-n1000-k20           has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  999 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-n2750-k55           has  1 depots, 55 vehicles and 2749 customers with a search space of 10^8380.
belgium-road-km-n50-k10     has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   49 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-road-km-n100-k10    has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   99 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-road-km-n500-k20    has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  499 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-road-km-n1000-k20   has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  999 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-road-km-n2750-k55   has  1 depots, 55 vehicles and 2749 customers with a search space of 10^8380.
belgium-road-time-n50-k10   has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   49 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-road-time-n100-k10  has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   99 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-road-time-n500-k20  has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  499 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-road-time-n1000-k20 has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  999 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-road-time-n2750-k55 has  1 depots, 55 vehicles and 2749 customers with a search space of 10^8380.
belgium-d2-n50-k10          has  2 depots, 10 vehicles and   48 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-d3-n100-k10         has  3 depots, 10 vehicles and   97 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-d5-n500-k20         has  5 depots, 20 vehicles and  495 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-d8-n1000-k20        has  8 depots, 20 vehicles and  992 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-d10-n2750-k55       has 10 depots, 55 vehicles and 2740 customers with a search space of 10^8380.

A-n32-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  31 customers with a search space of  10^40.
A-n33-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  32 customers with a search space of  10^41.
A-n33-k6  has 1 depots,  6 vehicles and  32 customers with a search space of  10^42.
A-n34-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  33 customers with a search space of  10^43.
A-n36-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  35 customers with a search space of  10^46.
A-n37-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  36 customers with a search space of  10^48.
A-n37-k6  has 1 depots,  6 vehicles and  36 customers with a search space of  10^49.
A-n38-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  37 customers with a search space of  10^49.
A-n39-k5  has 1 depots,  5 vehicles and  38 customers with a search space of  10^51.
A-n39-k6  has 1 depots,  6 vehicles and  38 customers with a search space of  10^52.
A-n44-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  43 customers with a search space of  10^61.
A-n45-k6  has 1 depots,  6 vehicles and  44 customers with a search space of  10^62.
A-n45-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  44 customers with a search space of  10^63.
A-n46-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  45 customers with a search space of  10^65.
A-n48-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  47 customers with a search space of  10^68.
A-n53-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  52 customers with a search space of  10^77.
A-n54-k7  has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and  53 customers with a search space of  10^79.
A-n55-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  54 customers with a search space of  10^82.
A-n60-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  59 customers with a search space of  10^91.
A-n61-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  60 customers with a search space of  10^93.
A-n62-k8  has 1 depots,  8 vehicles and  61 customers with a search space of  10^94.
A-n63-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  62 customers with a search space of  10^97.
A-n63-k10 has 1 depots, 10 vehicles and  62 customers with a search space of  10^98.
A-n64-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  63 customers with a search space of  10^99.
A-n65-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  64 customers with a search space of 10^101.
A-n69-k9  has 1 depots,  9 vehicles and  68 customers with a search space of 10^108.
A-n80-k10 has 1 depots, 10 vehicles and  79 customers with a search space of 10^130.
F-n45-k4  has 1 depots,  4 vehicles and  44 customers with a search space of  10^60.
F-n72-k4  has 1 depots,  4 vehicles and  71 customers with a search space of 10^108.
F-n135-k7 has 1 depots,  7 vehicles and 134 customers with a search space of 10^240.

CVRPTW instances (with time windows):

belgium-tw-d2-n50-k10    has  2 depots, 10 vehicles and   48 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-tw-d3-n100-k10   has  3 depots, 10 vehicles and   97 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-tw-d5-n500-k20   has  5 depots, 20 vehicles and  495 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-tw-d8-n1000-k20  has  8 depots, 20 vehicles and  992 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-tw-d10-n2750-k55 has 10 depots, 55 vehicles and 2740 customers with a search space of 10^8380.
belgium-tw-n50-k10       has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   49 customers with a search space of   10^74.
belgium-tw-n100-k10      has  1 depots, 10 vehicles and   99 customers with a search space of  10^170.
belgium-tw-n500-k20      has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  499 customers with a search space of 10^1168.
belgium-tw-n1000-k20     has  1 depots, 20 vehicles and  999 customers with a search space of 10^2607.
belgium-tw-n2750-k55     has  1 depots, 55 vehicles and 2749 customers with a search space of 10^8380.

Solomon_025_C101       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_025_C201       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_025_R101       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_025_R201       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_025_RC101      has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_025_RC201      has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and   25 customers with a search space of   10^40.
Solomon_100_C101       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Solomon_100_C201       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Solomon_100_R101       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Solomon_100_R201       has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Solomon_100_RC101      has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Solomon_100_RC201      has 1 depots,  25 vehicles and  100 customers with a search space of  10^185.
Homberger_0200_C1_2_1  has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0200_C2_2_1  has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0200_R1_2_1  has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0200_R2_2_1  has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0200_RC1_2_1 has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0200_RC2_2_1 has 1 depots,  50 vehicles and  200 customers with a search space of  10^429.
Homberger_0400_C1_4_1  has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0400_C2_4_1  has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0400_R1_4_1  has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0400_R2_4_1  has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0400_RC1_4_1 has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0400_RC2_4_1 has 1 depots, 100 vehicles and  400 customers with a search space of  10^978.
Homberger_0600_C1_6_1  has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0600_C2_6_1  has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0600_R1_6_1  has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0600_R2_6_1  has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0600_RC1_6_1 has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0600_RC2_6_1 has 1 depots, 150 vehicles and  600 customers with a search space of 10^1571.
Homberger_0800_C1_8_1  has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_0800_C2_8_1  has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_0800_R1_8_1  has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_0800_R2_8_1  has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_0800_RC1_8_1 has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_0800_RC2_8_1 has 1 depots, 200 vehicles and  800 customers with a search space of 10^2195.
Homberger_1000_C110_1  has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.
Homberger_1000_C210_1  has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.
Homberger_1000_R110_1  has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.
Homberger_1000_R210_1  has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.
Homberger_1000_RC110_1 has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.
Homberger_1000_RC210_1 has 1 depots, 250 vehicles and 1000 customers with a search space of 10^2840.

3.13.1. Domain model for Vehicle routing

The vehicle routing with time windows domain model makes heavy use of the shadow variable feature. This allows it to express its constraints more naturally, because properties such as arrivalTime and departureTime, are directly available on the domain model.

Road Distances Instead of Air Distances

In the real world, vehicles cannot follow a straight line from location to location: they have to use roads and highways. From a business point of view, this matters a lot:

For the optimization algorithm, this does not matter much, as long as the distance between two points can be looked up (and are preferably precalculated). The road cost does not even need to be a distance. It can also be travel time, fuel cost, or a weighted function of those. There are several technologies available to precalculate road costs, such as GraphHopper (embeddable, offline Java engine), Open MapQuest (web service) and Google Maps Client API (web service).

There are also several technologies to render it, such as Leaflet and Google Maps for developers.

It is even possible to render the actual road routes with GraphHopper or Google Map Directions, but because of route overlaps on highways, it can become harder to see the standstill order:

Take special care that the road costs between two points use the same optimization criteria as the one used in OptaPlanner. For example, GraphHopper will by default return the fastest route, not the shortest route. Don’t use the km (or miles) distances of the fastest GPS routes to optimize the shortest trip in OptaPlanner: this leads to a suboptimal solution as shown below:

Contrary to popular belief, most users do not want the shortest route: they want the fastest route instead. They prefer highways over normal roads. They prefer normal roads over dirt roads. In the real world, the fastest and shortest route are rarely the same.

Schedule all jobs in time and execution mode to minimize project delays. Each job is part of a project. A job can be executed in different ways: each way is an execution mode that implies a different duration but also different resource usages. This is a form of flexible job shop scheduling.

Hard constraints:

Medium constraints:

Soft constraints:

The problem is defined by the MISTA 2013 challenge.

Schedule A-1  has  2 projects,  24 jobs,   64 execution modes,  7 resources and  150 resource requirements.
Schedule A-2  has  2 projects,  44 jobs,  124 execution modes,  7 resources and  420 resource requirements.
Schedule A-3  has  2 projects,  64 jobs,  184 execution modes,  7 resources and  630 resource requirements.
Schedule A-4  has  5 projects,  60 jobs,  160 execution modes, 16 resources and  390 resource requirements.
Schedule A-5  has  5 projects, 110 jobs,  310 execution modes, 16 resources and  900 resource requirements.
Schedule A-6  has  5 projects, 160 jobs,  460 execution modes, 16 resources and 1440 resource requirements.
Schedule A-7  has 10 projects, 120 jobs,  320 execution modes, 22 resources and  900 resource requirements.
Schedule A-8  has 10 projects, 220 jobs,  620 execution modes, 22 resources and 1860 resource requirements.
Schedule A-9  has 10 projects, 320 jobs,  920 execution modes, 31 resources and 2880 resource requirements.
Schedule A-10 has 10 projects, 320 jobs,  920 execution modes, 31 resources and 2970 resource requirements.
Schedule B-1  has 10 projects, 120 jobs,  320 execution modes, 31 resources and  900 resource requirements.
Schedule B-2  has 10 projects, 220 jobs,  620 execution modes, 22 resources and 1740 resource requirements.
Schedule B-3  has 10 projects, 320 jobs,  920 execution modes, 31 resources and 3060 resource requirements.
Schedule B-4  has 15 projects, 180 jobs,  480 execution modes, 46 resources and 1530 resource requirements.
Schedule B-5  has 15 projects, 330 jobs,  930 execution modes, 46 resources and 2760 resource requirements.
Schedule B-6  has 15 projects, 480 jobs, 1380 execution modes, 46 resources and 4500 resource requirements.
Schedule B-7  has 20 projects, 240 jobs,  640 execution modes, 61 resources and 1710 resource requirements.
Schedule B-8  has 20 projects, 440 jobs, 1240 execution modes, 42 resources and 3180 resource requirements.
Schedule B-9  has 20 projects, 640 jobs, 1840 execution modes, 61 resources and 5940 resource requirements.
Schedule B-10 has 20 projects, 460 jobs, 1300 execution modes, 42 resources and 4260 resource requirements.

Assign each task to a spot in an employee’s queue. Each task has a duration which is affected by the employee’s affinity level with the task’s customer.

Hard constraints:

Soft level 0 constraints:

Soft level 1 constraints:

Soft level 2 constraints:

Soft level 3 constraints:

Figure 3.9. Value proposition

24tasks-8employees   has  24 tasks, 6 skills,  8 employees,   4 task types and  4 customers with a search space of   10^30.
50tasks-5employees   has  50 tasks, 5 skills,  5 employees,  10 task types and 10 customers with a search space of   10^69.
100tasks-5employees  has 100 tasks, 5 skills,  5 employees,  20 task types and 15 customers with a search space of  10^164.
500tasks-20employees has 500 tasks, 6 skills, 20 employees, 100 task types and 60 customers with a search space of 10^1168.

Figure 3.10. Domain model

Schedule each exam into a period and into a room. Multiple exams can share the same room during the same period.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints (each of which has a parametrized penalty):

It uses large test data sets of real-life universities.

The problem is defined by the International Timetabling Competition 2007 track 1. Geoffrey De Smet finished 4th in that competition with a very early version of OptaPlanner. Many improvements have been made since then.

exam_comp_set1 has  7883 students,  607 exams, 54 periods,  7 rooms,  12 period constraints and  0 room constraints with a search space of 10^1564.
exam_comp_set2 has 12484 students,  870 exams, 40 periods, 49 rooms,  12 period constraints and  2 room constraints with a search space of 10^2864.
exam_comp_set3 has 16365 students,  934 exams, 36 periods, 48 rooms, 168 period constraints and 15 room constraints with a search space of 10^3023.
exam_comp_set4 has  4421 students,  273 exams, 21 periods,  1 rooms,  40 period constraints and  0 room constraints with a search space of  10^360.
exam_comp_set5 has  8719 students, 1018 exams, 42 periods,  3 rooms,  27 period constraints and  0 room constraints with a search space of 10^2138.
exam_comp_set6 has  7909 students,  242 exams, 16 periods,  8 rooms,  22 period constraints and  0 room constraints with a search space of  10^509.
exam_comp_set7 has 13795 students, 1096 exams, 80 periods, 15 rooms,  28 period constraints and  0 room constraints with a search space of 10^3374.
exam_comp_set8 has  7718 students,  598 exams, 80 periods,  8 rooms,  20 period constraints and  1 room constraints with a search space of 10^1678.

3.16.1. Domain model for exam timetabling

The following diagram shows the main examination domain classes:

Figure 3.11. Examination domain class diagram

Notice that we’ve split up the exam concept into an Exam class and a Topic class. The Exam instances change during solving (this is the planning entity class), when their period or room property changes. The Topic, Period and Room instances never change during solving (these are problem facts, just like some other classes).

For each shift, assign a nurse to work that shift.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

The problem is defined by the International Nurse Rostering Competition 2010.

Figure 3.12. Value proposition

toy1          has 1 skills, 3 shiftTypes, 2 patterns, 1 contracts,  6 employees,  7 shiftDates,  35 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of   10^27.
toy2          has 1 skills, 3 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 2 contracts, 20 employees, 28 shiftDates, 180 shiftAssignments and 140 requests with a search space of  10^234.

sprint01      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint02      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint03      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint04      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint05      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint06      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint07      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint08      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint09      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint10      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 4 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_hint01 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_hint02 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_hint03 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late01 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late02 has 1 skills, 3 shiftTypes, 4 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 144 shiftAssignments and 139 requests with a search space of  10^144.
sprint_late03 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 160 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^160.
sprint_late04 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 160 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^160.
sprint_late05 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 8 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late06 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late07 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late08 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late09 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of  10^152.
sprint_late10 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 3 contracts, 10 employees, 28 shiftDates, 152 shiftAssignments and 150 requests with a search space of  10^152.

medium01      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 31 employees, 28 shiftDates, 608 shiftAssignments and 403 requests with a search space of  10^906.
medium02      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 31 employees, 28 shiftDates, 608 shiftAssignments and 403 requests with a search space of  10^906.
medium03      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 31 employees, 28 shiftDates, 608 shiftAssignments and 403 requests with a search space of  10^906.
medium04      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 31 employees, 28 shiftDates, 608 shiftAssignments and 403 requests with a search space of  10^906.
medium05      has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 31 employees, 28 shiftDates, 608 shiftAssignments and 403 requests with a search space of  10^906.
medium_hint01 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 4 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 428 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^632.
medium_hint02 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 3 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 428 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^632.
medium_hint03 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 4 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 428 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^632.
medium_late01 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 4 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 424 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^626.
medium_late02 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 3 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 428 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^632.
medium_late03 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 0 patterns, 4 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 428 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^632.
medium_late04 has 1 skills, 4 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 3 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 416 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^614.
medium_late05 has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 4 contracts, 30 employees, 28 shiftDates, 452 shiftAssignments and 390 requests with a search space of  10^667.

long01        has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 3 contracts, 49 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and 735 requests with a search space of 10^1250.
long02        has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 3 contracts, 49 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and 735 requests with a search space of 10^1250.
long03        has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 3 contracts, 49 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and 735 requests with a search space of 10^1250.
long04        has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 3 contracts, 49 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and 735 requests with a search space of 10^1250.
long05        has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 3 patterns, 3 contracts, 49 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and 735 requests with a search space of 10^1250.
long_hint01   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1257.
long_hint02   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1257.
long_hint03   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 7 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1257.
long_late01   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 752 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1277.
long_late02   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 4 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 752 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1277.
long_late03   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 752 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1277.
long_late04   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 4 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 752 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1277.
long_late05   has 2 skills, 5 shiftTypes, 9 patterns, 3 contracts, 50 employees, 28 shiftDates, 740 shiftAssignments and   0 requests with a search space of 10^1257.

Figure 3.13. Domain model

Schedule matches between n number of teams.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

The problem is defined on Michael Trick’s website (which contains the world records too).

1-nl04     has  6 days,  4 teams and   12 matches with a search space of    10^5.
1-nl06     has 10 days,  6 teams and   30 matches with a search space of   10^19.
1-nl08     has 14 days,  8 teams and   56 matches with a search space of   10^43.
1-nl10     has 18 days, 10 teams and   90 matches with a search space of   10^79.
1-nl12     has 22 days, 12 teams and  132 matches with a search space of  10^126.
1-nl14     has 26 days, 14 teams and  182 matches with a search space of  10^186.
1-nl16     has 30 days, 16 teams and  240 matches with a search space of  10^259.
2-bra24    has 46 days, 24 teams and  552 matches with a search space of  10^692.
3-nfl16    has 30 days, 16 teams and  240 matches with a search space of  10^259.
3-nfl18    has 34 days, 18 teams and  306 matches with a search space of  10^346.
3-nfl20    has 38 days, 20 teams and  380 matches with a search space of  10^447.
3-nfl22    has 42 days, 22 teams and  462 matches with a search space of  10^562.
3-nfl24    has 46 days, 24 teams and  552 matches with a search space of  10^692.
3-nfl26    has 50 days, 26 teams and  650 matches with a search space of  10^838.
3-nfl28    has 54 days, 28 teams and  756 matches with a search space of  10^999.
3-nfl30    has 58 days, 30 teams and  870 matches with a search space of 10^1175.
3-nfl32    has 62 days, 32 teams and  992 matches with a search space of 10^1367.
4-super04  has  6 days,  4 teams and   12 matches with a search space of    10^5.
4-super06  has 10 days,  6 teams and   30 matches with a search space of   10^19.
4-super08  has 14 days,  8 teams and   56 matches with a search space of   10^43.
4-super10  has 18 days, 10 teams and   90 matches with a search space of   10^79.
4-super12  has 22 days, 12 teams and  132 matches with a search space of  10^126.
4-super14  has 26 days, 14 teams and  182 matches with a search space of  10^186.
5-galaxy04 has  6 days,  4 teams and   12 matches with a search space of    10^5.
5-galaxy06 has 10 days,  6 teams and   30 matches with a search space of   10^19.
5-galaxy08 has 14 days,  8 teams and   56 matches with a search space of   10^43.
5-galaxy10 has 18 days, 10 teams and   90 matches with a search space of   10^79.
5-galaxy12 has 22 days, 12 teams and  132 matches with a search space of  10^126.
5-galaxy14 has 26 days, 14 teams and  182 matches with a search space of  10^186.
5-galaxy16 has 30 days, 16 teams and  240 matches with a search space of  10^259.
5-galaxy18 has 34 days, 18 teams and  306 matches with a search space of  10^346.
5-galaxy20 has 38 days, 20 teams and  380 matches with a search space of  10^447.
5-galaxy22 has 42 days, 22 teams and  462 matches with a search space of  10^562.
5-galaxy24 has 46 days, 24 teams and  552 matches with a search space of  10^692.
5-galaxy26 has 50 days, 26 teams and  650 matches with a search space of  10^838.
5-galaxy28 has 54 days, 28 teams and  756 matches with a search space of  10^999.
5-galaxy30 has 58 days, 30 teams and  870 matches with a search space of 10^1175.
5-galaxy32 has 62 days, 32 teams and  992 matches with a search space of 10^1367.
5-galaxy34 has 66 days, 34 teams and 1122 matches with a search space of 10^1576.
5-galaxy36 has 70 days, 36 teams and 1260 matches with a search space of 10^1801.
5-galaxy38 has 74 days, 38 teams and 1406 matches with a search space of 10^2042.
5-galaxy40 has 78 days, 40 teams and 1560 matches with a search space of 10^2301.

Schedule all tasks in time and on a machine to minimize power cost. Power prices differ in time. This is a form of job shop scheduling.

Hard constraints:

Medium constraints:

Soft constraints (addendum to the original problem definition):

The problem is defined by the ICON challenge.

sample01   has 3 resources,   2 machines, 288 periods and   25 tasks with a search space of    10^53.
sample02   has 3 resources,   2 machines, 288 periods and   50 tasks with a search space of   10^114.
sample03   has 3 resources,   2 machines, 288 periods and  100 tasks with a search space of   10^226.
sample04   has 3 resources,   5 machines, 288 periods and  100 tasks with a search space of   10^266.
sample05   has 3 resources,   2 machines, 288 periods and  250 tasks with a search space of   10^584.
sample06   has 3 resources,   5 machines, 288 periods and  250 tasks with a search space of   10^673.
sample07   has 3 resources,   2 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^2388.
sample08   has 3 resources,   5 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^2748.
sample09   has 4 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^6668.
instance00 has 1 resources,  10 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^595.
instance01 has 1 resources,  10 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^599.
instance02 has 1 resources,  10 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^599.
instance03 has 1 resources,  10 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^591.
instance04 has 1 resources,  10 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^590.
instance05 has 2 resources,  25 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^667.
instance06 has 2 resources,  25 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^660.
instance07 has 2 resources,  25 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^662.
instance08 has 2 resources,  25 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^651.
instance09 has 2 resources,  25 machines, 288 periods and  200 tasks with a search space of   10^659.
instance10 has 2 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1657.
instance11 has 2 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1644.
instance12 has 2 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1637.
instance13 has 2 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1659.
instance14 has 2 resources,  20 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1643.
instance15 has 3 resources,  40 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1782.
instance16 has 3 resources,  40 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1778.
instance17 has 3 resources,  40 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1764.
instance18 has 3 resources,  40 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1769.
instance19 has 3 resources,  40 machines, 288 periods and  500 tasks with a search space of  10^1778.
instance20 has 3 resources,  50 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3689.
instance21 has 3 resources,  50 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3678.
instance22 has 3 resources,  50 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3706.
instance23 has 3 resources,  50 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3676.
instance24 has 3 resources,  50 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3681.
instance25 has 3 resources,  60 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3774.
instance26 has 3 resources,  60 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3737.
instance27 has 3 resources,  60 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3744.
instance28 has 3 resources,  60 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3731.
instance29 has 3 resources,  60 machines, 288 periods and 1000 tasks with a search space of  10^3746.
instance30 has 4 resources,  70 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7718.
instance31 has 4 resources,  70 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7740.
instance32 has 4 resources,  70 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7686.
instance33 has 4 resources,  70 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7672.
instance34 has 4 resources,  70 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7695.
instance35 has 4 resources,  80 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7807.
instance36 has 4 resources,  80 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7814.
instance37 has 4 resources,  80 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7764.
instance38 has 4 resources,  80 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7736.
instance39 has 4 resources,  80 machines, 288 periods and 2000 tasks with a search space of  10^7783.
instance40 has 4 resources,  90 machines, 288 periods and 4000 tasks with a search space of 10^15976.
instance41 has 4 resources,  90 machines, 288 periods and 4000 tasks with a search space of 10^15935.
instance42 has 4 resources,  90 machines, 288 periods and 4000 tasks with a search space of 10^15887.
instance43 has 4 resources,  90 machines, 288 periods and 4000 tasks with a search space of 10^15896.
instance44 has 4 resources,  90 machines, 288 periods and 4000 tasks with a search space of 10^15885.
instance45 has 4 resources, 100 machines, 288 periods and 5000 tasks with a search space of 10^20173.
instance46 has 4 resources, 100 machines, 288 periods and 5000 tasks with a search space of 10^20132.
instance47 has 4 resources, 100 machines, 288 periods and 5000 tasks with a search space of 10^20126.
instance48 has 4 resources, 100 machines, 288 periods and 5000 tasks with a search space of 10^20110.
instance49 has 4 resources, 100 machines, 288 periods and 5000 tasks with a search space of 10^20078.

Decide the relative quantity to invest in each asset class.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

de_smet_1 has 1 regions, 3 sectors and 11 asset classes with a search space of 10^4.
irrinki_1 has 2 regions, 3 sectors and 6 asset classes with a search space of 10^3.

Larger datasets have not been created or tested yet, but should not pose a problem. A good source of data is this Asset Correlation website.

Assign each conference talk to a timeslot and a room. Timeslots can overlap. Read and write to and from an *.xlsx file that can be edited with LibreOffice or Excel.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

Figure 3.14. Value proposition

18talks-6timeslots-5rooms    has  18 talks,  6 timeslots and  5 rooms with a search space of  10^26.
36talks-12timeslots-5rooms   has  36 talks, 12 timeslots and  5 rooms with a search space of  10^64.
72talks-12timeslots-10rooms  has  72 talks, 12 timeslots and 10 rooms with a search space of 10^149.
108talks-18timeslots-10rooms has 108 talks, 18 timeslots and 10 rooms with a search space of 10^243.
216talks-18timeslots-20rooms has 216 talks, 18 timeslots and 20 rooms with a search space of 10^552.

Drive the rock bank bus from show to show, but schedule shows only on available days.

Hard constraints:

Medium constraints:

Soft constraints:

47shows has 47 shows with a search space of 10^59.

Assign flights to pilots and flight attendants.

Hard constraints:

Soft constraints:

175flights-7days-Europe  has 2 skills, 50 airports, 150 employees, 175 flights and  875 flight assignments with a search space of  10^1904.
700flights-28days-Europe has 2 skills, 50 airports, 150 employees, 700 flights and 3500 flight assignments with a search space of  10^7616.
875flights-7days-Europe  has 2 skills, 50 airports, 750 employees, 875 flights and 4375 flight assignments with a search space of 10^12578.
175flights-7days-US      has 2 skills, 48 airports, 150 employees, 175 flights and  875 flight assignments with a search space of  10^1904.

Red Hat build of OptaPlanner includes several examples that demonstrate a variety of planning use cases. Download and use the examples to explore different types of planning solutions.

If you use an integrated development environment (IDE), such as IntelliJ, Eclipse, or Netbeans, you can run your downloaded OptaPlanner examples within your development environment.

Business Central includes a number of sample projects that you can use to get familiar with the product and its features. The employee rostering sample project is designed and created to demonstrate the shift rostering use case for Red Hat build of OptaPlanner. Use the following procedure to deploy and run the employee rostering sample in Business Central.

The rest of this document explains each of the project assets and their configuration.

The employee rostering sample project is a preconfigured project available in Business Central. You can learn about how to deploy this project in Section 5.1, “Deploying the employee rostering sample project in Business Central”.

You can create the employee rostering example "from scratch". You can use the workflow in this example to create a similar project of your own in Business Central.

package

import

function  // Optional

query  // Optional

declare   // Optional

global   // Optional

rule "rule name"
    // Attributes
    when
        // Conditions
    then
        // Actions
end

rule "rule2 name"

...

rule "Underage"
  salience 15
  agenda-group "applicationGroup"
  when
    $application : LoanApplication()
    Applicant( age < 21 )
  then
    $application.setApproved( false );
    $application.setExplanation( "Underage" );
end

5.2.5. Creating rules for employee rostering using guided rules

You can create rules that define hard and soft constraints for employee rostering using the guided rules designer in Business Central.

5.2.5.1. Guided rules

Guided rules are business rules that you create in a UI-based guided rules designer in Business Central that leads you through the rule-creation process. The guided rules designer provides fields and options for acceptable input based on the data objects for the rule being defined. The guided rules that you define are compiled into Drools Rule Language (DRL) rules as with all other rule assets.

All data objects related to a guided rule must be in the same project package as the guided rule. Assets in the same package are imported by default. After you create the necessary data objects and the guided rule, you can use the Data Objects tab of the guided rules designer to verify that all required data objects are listed or to import other existing data objects by adding a New item.

5.2.5.2. Creating a guided rule to balance employee shift numbers

The BalanceEmployeesShiftNumber guided rule creates a soft constraint that ensures shifts are assigned to employees in a way that is balanced as evenly as possible. It does this by creating a score penalty that increases when shift distribution is less even. The score formula, implemented by the rule, incentivizes the Solver to distribute shifts in a more balanced way.

Procedure

1. In Business Central, go to Menu → Design → Projects and click the project name.
2. Click Add Asset → Guided Rule.
3. Enter BalanceEmployeesShiftNumber as the Guided Rule name and select the employeerostering.employeerostering Package.
4. Click Ok to create the rule asset.
5. Add a WHEN condition by clicking the in the WHEN field.
6. Select Employee in the Add a condition to the rule window. Click +Ok.
7. Click the Employee condition to modify the constraints and add the variable name $employee.

8. Add the WHEN condition From Accumulate.

   1. Above the From Accumulate condition, click click to add pattern and select Number as the fact type from the drop-down list.
   2. Add the variable name $shiftCount to the Number condition.
   3. Below the From Accumulate condition, click click to add pattern and select the ShiftAssignment fact type from the drop-down list.
   4. Add the variable name $shiftAssignment to the ShiftAssignment fact type.
   5. Click the ShiftAssignment condition again and from the Add a restriction on a field drop-down list, select employee.
   6. Select equal to from the drop-down list next to the employee constraint.
   7. Click the icon next to the drop-down button to add a variable, and click Bound variable in the Field value window.
   8. Select $employee from the drop-down list.
   9. In the Function box type count($shiftAssignment).
9. Add the THEN condition by clicking the in the THEN field.

10. Select Modify Soft Score in the Add a new action window. Click +Ok.

    1. Type the following expression into the box: -($shiftCount.intValue()*$shiftCount.intValue())
11. Click Validate in the upper-right corner to check all rule conditions are valid. If the rule validation fails, address any problems described in the error message, review all components in the rule, and try again to validate the rule until the rule passes.
12. Click Save to save the rule.

For more information about creating guided rules, see Designing a decision service using guided rules.

5.2.5.3. Creating a guided rule for no more than one shift per day

The OneEmployeeShiftPerDay guided rule creates a hard constraint that employees are not assigned more than one shift per day. In the employee rostering example, this constraint is created using the guided rule designer.

Procedure

1. In Business Central, go to Menu → Design → Projects and click the project name.
2. Click Add Asset → Guided Rule.
3. Enter OneEmployeeShiftPerDay as the Guided Rule name and select the employeerostering.employeerostering Package.
4. Click Ok to create the rule asset.
5. Add a WHEN condition by clicking the in the WHEN field.
6. Select Free form DRL from the Add a condition to the rule window.

7. In the free form DRL box, type the following condition:

   $shiftAssignment : ShiftAssignment( employee != null )
   		ShiftAssignment( this != $shiftAssignment , employee == $shiftAssignment.employee , shift.timeslot.startTime.toLocalDate() == $shiftAssignment.shift.timeslot.startTime.toLocalDate() )

   This condition states that a shift cannot be assigned to an employee that already has another shift assignment on the same day.

8. Add the THEN condition by clicking the in the THEN field.
9. Select Add free form DRL from the Add a new action window.

10. In the free form DRL box, type the following condition:

    scoreHolder.addHardConstraintMatch(kcontext, -1);

11. Click Validate in the upper-right corner to check all rule conditions are valid. If the rule validation fails, address any problems described in the error message, review all components in the rule, and try again to validate the rule until the rule passes.
12. Click Save to save the rule.

For more information about creating guided rules, see Designing a decision service using guided rules.

5.2.5.4. Creating a guided rule to match skills to shift requirements

The ShiftReqiredSkillsAreMet guided rule creates a hard constraint that ensures all shifts are assigned an employee with the correct set of skills. In the employee rostering example, this constraint is created using the guided rule designer.

Procedure

1. In Business Central, go to Menu → Design → Projects and click the project name.
2. Click Add Asset → Guided Rule.
3. Enter ShiftReqiredSkillsAreMet as the Guided Rule name and select the employeerostering.employeerostering Package.
4. Click Ok to create the rule asset.
5. Add a WHEN condition by clicking the in the WHEN field.
6. Select ShiftAssignment in the Add a condition to the rule window. Click +Ok.
7. Click the ShiftAssignment condition, and select employee from the Add a restriction on a field drop-down list.
8. In the designer, click the drop-down list next to employee and select is not null.

9. Click the ShiftAssignment condition, and click Expression editor.

   1. In the designer, click [not bound] to open the Expression editor, and bind the expression to the variable $requiredSkill. Click Set.
   2. In the designer, next to $requiredSkill, select shift from the first drop-down list, then requiredSkill from the next drop-down list.

10. Click the ShiftAssignment condition, and click Expression editor.

    1. In the designer, next to [not bound], select employee from the first drop-down list, then skills from the next drop-down list.
    2. Leave the next drop-down list as Choose.
    3. In the next drop-down box, change please choose to excludes.
    4. Click the icon next to excludes, and in the Field value window, click the New formula button.
    5. Type $requiredSkill into the formula box.
11. Add the THEN condition by clicking the in the THEN field.
12. Select Modify Hard Score in the Add a new action window. Click +Ok.
13. Type -1 into the score actions box.
14. Click Validate in the upper-right corner to check all rule conditions are valid. If the rule validation fails, address any problems described in the error message, review all components in the rule, and try again to validate the rule until the rule passes.
15. Click Save to save the rule.

For more information about creating guided rules, see Designing a decision service using guided rules.

5.2.5.5. Creating a guided rule to manage day off requests

The DayOffRequest guided rule creates a soft constraint. This constraint allows a shift to be reassigned to another employee in the event the employee who was originally assigned the shift is no longer able to work that day. In the employee rostering example, this constraint is created using the guided rule designer.

Procedure

1. In Business Central, go to Menu → Design → Projects and click the project name.
2. Click Add Asset → Guided Rule.
3. Enter DayOffRequest as the Guided Rule name and select the employeerostering.employeerostering Package.
4. Click Ok to create the rule asset.
5. Add a WHEN condition by clicking the in the WHEN field.
6. Select Free form DRL from the Add a condition to the rule window.

7. In the free form DRL box, type the following condition:

   $dayOffRequest : DayOffRequest( )
   		ShiftAssignment( employee == $dayOffRequest.employee , shift.timeslot.startTime.toLocalDate() == $dayOffRequest.date )

   This condition states if a shift is assigned to an employee who has made a day off request, the employee can be unassigned the shift on that day.

8. Add the THEN condition by clicking the in the THEN field.
9. Select Add free form DRL from the Add a new action window.

10. In the free form DRL box, type the following condition:

    scoreHolder.addSoftConstraintMatch(kcontext, -100);

11. Click Validate in the upper-right corner to check all rule conditions are valid. If the rule validation fails, address any problems described in the error message, review all components in the rule, and try again to validate the rule until the rule passes.
12. Click Save to save the rule.

For more information about creating guided rules, see Designing a decision service using guided rules.

After deploying or re-creating the sample solver, you can access it using the REST API.

You must register a solver instance using the REST API. Then you can supply data sets and retrieve optimized solutions.

Apache Maven is a distributed build automation tool used in Java application development to create, manage, and build software projects. Maven uses standard configuration files called Project Object Model (POM) files to define projects and manage the build process. POM files describe the module and component dependencies, build order, and targets for the resulting project packaging and output using an XML file. This ensures that the project is built in a correct and uniform manner.

You can use the online Maven repository with your Quarkus projects or you can download the Red Hat build of Quarkus Maven repository.

You can get up and running with a Red Hat build of OptaPlanner and Quarkus application using Apache Maven and the Quarkus Maven plug-in.

You can use the code.quarkus.redhat.com website to generate a Red Hat build of OptaPlanner Quarkus Maven project and automatically add and configure the extensions that you want to use in your application. In addition, code.quarkus.redhat.com automatically manages the configuration parameters required to compile your project into a native executable.

This section walks you through the process of generating an OptaPlanner Maven project and includes the following topics:

You can use the Quarkus command line interface (CLI) to create a Quarkus OptaPlanner project.

You can use an XML file to configure the solver. In a typical project that follows the Maven directory structure, after you build a Solver instance with the SolverFactory, the solverConfig XML file is located in the $PROJECT_DIR/src/main/resources/org/optaplanner/examples/<PROJECT>/solver directory, where <PROJECT> is the name of your OptaPlanner project. Alternatively, you can create a SolverFactory from a file with SolverFactory.createFromXmlFile(). However, for portability reasons, a classpath resource is recommended.

Both a Solver and a SolverFactory have a generic type called Solution_, which is the class representing a planning problem and solution.

OptaPlanner makes it relatively easy to switch optimization algorithms by changing the configuration.

You can configure a solver by using the SolverConfig API. This is especially useful to change values dynamically at runtime. The following example changes the running time based on system properties before building the Solver in the NQueens project:

        SolverConfig solverConfig = SolverConfig.createFromXmlResource(
                "org/optaplanner/examples/nqueens/solver/nqueensSolverConfig.xml");
        solverConfig.withTerminationConfig(new TerminationConfig()
                        .withMinutesSpentLimit(userInput));

        SolverFactory<NQueens> solverFactory = SolverFactory.create(solverConfig);
        Solver<NQueens> solver = solverFactory.buildSolver();

Every element in the solver configuration XML file is available as a Config class or a property on a Config class in the package namespace org.optaplanner.core.config. These Config classes are the Java representation of the XML format. They build the runtime components of the package namespace org.optaplanner.core.impl and assemble them into an efficient Solver.

    private SolverConfig template;

    public void init() {
        template = SolverConfig.createFromXmlResource(
                "org/optaplanner/examples/nqueens/solver/nqueensSolverConfig.xml");
        template.setTerminationConfig(new TerminationConfig());
    }

    // Called concurrently from different threads
    public void userRequest(..., long userInput) {
        SolverConfig solverConfig = new SolverConfig(template); // Copy it
        solverConfig.getTerminationConfig().setMinutesSpentLimit(userInput);
        SolverFactory<NQueens> solverFactory = SolverFactory.create(solverConfig);
        Solver<NQueens> solver = solverFactory.buildSolver();
        ...
    }

You must specify which classes in your domain model are planning entities, which properties are planning variables, and so on. Use one of the following methods to add annotations to your OptaPlanner project:

By default, OptaPlanner accesses your domain using reflection. Reflection is reliable but slow compared to direct access. Alternatively, you can configure OptaPlanner to access your domain using Gizmo, which will generate bytecode that directly accesses the fields and methods of your domain without reflection. However, this method has the following restrictions:

  <solver>
    <domainAccessType>GIZMO</domainAccessType>
  </solver>

In your OptaPlanner projects, you can add custom properties to solver configuration elements that instantiate classes and have documents that explicitly mention custom properties.

Use the solver to solve a planning problem.

The following example solves the NQueens problem:

    NQueens problem = ...;
    NQueens bestSolution = solver.solve(problem);

In this example, the solve() method will return an NQueens instance with every Queen assigned to a Row.

Figure 8.1. Best Solution for the Four Queens Puzzle in 8ms (Also an Optimal Solution)

The solve(Solution) method can take a long time depending on the problem size and the solver configuration. The Solver intelligently works through the search space of possible solutions and remembers the best solution it encounters during solving. Depending on a number of factors, including problem size, how much time the Solver has, the solver configuration, and so forth, the best solution might or might not be an optimal solution.

The solver environment mode enables you to detect common bugs in your implementation. It does not affect the logging level.

A solver has a single random instance. Some solver configurations use the random instance a lot more than others. For example, the Simulated Annealing algorithm depends highly on random numbers, while Tabu Search only depends on it to resolve score ties. The environment mode influences the seed of that random instance.

You can set the environment mode in the solver configuration XML file. The following example sets the FAST_ASSERT mode:

<solver xmlns="https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver/solver.xsd">
  <environmentMode>FAST_ASSERT</environmentMode>
  ...
</solver>

You can change the logging level in an OptaPlanner solver to review solver activity. The following list describes the different logging levels:

The following example shows output from debug logging:

INFO  Solving started: time spent (3), best score (-4init/0), random (JDK with seed 0).
DEBUG     CH step (0), time spent (5), score (-3init/0), selected move count (1), picked move (Queen-2 {null -> Row-0}).
DEBUG     CH step (1), time spent (7), score (-2init/0), selected move count (3), picked move (Queen-1 {null -> Row-2}).
DEBUG     CH step (2), time spent (10), score (-1init/0), selected move count (4), picked move (Queen-3 {null -> Row-3}).
DEBUG     CH step (3), time spent (12), score (-1), selected move count (4), picked move (Queen-0 {null -> Row-1}).
INFO  Construction Heuristic phase (0) ended: time spent (12), best score (-1), score calculation speed (9000/sec), step total (4).
DEBUG     LS step (0), time spent (19), score (-1),     best score (-1), accepted/selected move count (12/12), picked move (Queen-1 {Row-2 -> Row-3}).
DEBUG     LS step (1), time spent (24), score (0), new best score (0), accepted/selected move count (9/12), picked move (Queen-3 {Row-3 -> Row-2}).
INFO  Local Search phase (1) ended: time spent (24), best score (0), score calculation speed (4000/sec), step total (2).
INFO  Solving ended: time spent (24), best score (0), score calculation speed (7000/sec), phase total (2), environment mode (REPRODUCIBLE).

All time spent values are in milliseconds.

Everything is logged to SLF4J, which is a simple logging facade that delegates every log message to Logback, Apache Commons Logging, Log4j, or java.util.logging. Add a dependency to the logging adaptor for your logging framework of choice.

Logback is the recommended logging frameworkd to use with OptaPlanner. Use Logback to log OptaPlanner solver activity.

If you are already using Log4J and you do not want to switch to its faster successor, Logback, you can configure your OptaPlanner project for Log4J.

OptaPlanner exposes metrics through Micrometer, a metrics instrumentation library for Java applications. You can use Micrometer with popular monitoring systems to monitor the OptaPlanner solver.

<solver xmlns="https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver https://www.optaplanner.org/xsd/solver/solver.xsd">
  <monitoring>
    <metric>BEST_SCORE</metric>
    <metric>SCORE_CALCULATION_COUNT</metric>
    ...
  </monitoring>
  ...
</solver>

Many heuristics and metaheuristics depend on a pseudorandom number generator for move selection, to resolve score ties, probability based move acceptance, and so on. During solving, the same random instance is reused to improve reproducibility, performance, and uniform distribution of random values.

A random seed is a number used to initialize a pseudorandom number generator.

For most use cases, the value of the randomType property has no significant impact on the average quality of the best solution on multiple data sets.

Batch solving is solving multiple data sets in parallel. Batch solving is particularly useful overnight:

public class TimeTableService {

    private SolverManager<TimeTable, Long> solverManager;

    // Returns immediately, call it for every data set
    public void solveBatch(Long timeTableId) {
        solverManager.solve(timeTableId,
                // Called once, when solving starts
                this::findById,
                // Called once, when solving ends
                this::save);
    }

    public TimeTable findById(Long timeTableId) {...}

    public void save(TimeTable timeTable) {...}

}

When a solver is running while a user is waiting for a solution, the user might need to wait for several minutes or hours before receiving a result. To assure the user that everything is going well, show progress by displaying the best solution and best score attained so far.

You can get up and running with a Red Hat build of OptaPlanner and Quarkus application using Apache Maven and the Quarkus Maven plug-in.

The goal of the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner timetable project is to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. To do this, add three classes, Timeslot, Lesson, and Room, as shown in the following diagram:

A time slot has no date because a high school schedule just repeats every week. There is no need for continuous planning. A timeslot is called a problem fact because no Timeslot instances change during solving. Such classes do not require any OptaPlanner-specific annotations.

Room instances do not change during solving so Room is also a problem fact.

During solving, OptaPlanner changes the timeslot and room fields of the Lesson class to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. Because OptaPlanner changes these fields, Lesson is a planning entity:

Most of the fields in the previous diagram contain input data, except for the orange fields. A lesson’s timeslot and room fields are unassigned (null) in the input data and assigned (not null) in the output data. OptaPlanner changes these fields during solving. Such fields are called planning variables. In order for OptaPlanner to recognize them, both the timeslot and room fields require an @PlanningVariable annotation. Their containing class, Lesson, requires an @PlanningEntity annotation.

When solving a problem, a score represents the quality of a specific solution. The higher the score the better. Red Hat build of OptaPlanner looks for the best solution, which is the solution with the highest score found in the available time. It might be the optimal solution.

Because the timetable example use case has hard and soft constraints, use the HardSoftScore class to represent the score:

Hard constraints are weighted against other hard constraints. Soft constraints are weighted against other soft constraints. Hard constraints always outweigh soft constraints, regardless of their respective weights.

To calculate the score, you could implement an EasyScoreCalculator class:

public class TimeTableEasyScoreCalculator implements EasyScoreCalculator<TimeTable> {

    @Override
    public HardSoftScore calculateScore(TimeTable timeTable) {
        List<Lesson> lessonList = timeTable.getLessonList();
        int hardScore = 0;
        for (Lesson a : lessonList) {
            for (Lesson b : lessonList) {
                if (a.getTimeslot() != null && a.getTimeslot().equals(b.getTimeslot())
                        && a.getId() < b.getId()) {
                    // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getRoom() != null && a.getRoom().equals(b.getRoom())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getTeacher().equals(b.getTeacher())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getStudentGroup().equals(b.getStudentGroup())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        int softScore = 0;
        // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        return HardSoftScore.of(hardScore, softScore);
    }

}

Unfortunately, this solution does not scale well because it is non-incremental: every time a lesson is assigned to a different time slot or room, all lessons are re-evaluated to calculate the new score.

A better solution is to create a src/main/java/com/example/solver/TimeTableConstraintProvider.java class to perform incremental score calculation. This class uses OptaPlanner’s ConstraintStream API which is inspired by Java 8 Streams and SQL. The ConstraintProvider scales an order of magnitude better than the EasyScoreCalculator: O(n) instead of O(n²).

package com.example.solver;

import com.example.domain.Lesson;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Constraint;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintFactory;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Joiners;

public class TimeTableConstraintProvider implements ConstraintProvider {

    @Override
    public Constraint[] defineConstraints(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        return new Constraint[] {
                // Hard constraints
                roomConflict(constraintFactory),
                teacherConflict(constraintFactory),
                studentGroupConflict(constraintFactory),
                // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        };
    }

    private Constraint roomConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.

        // Select a lesson ...
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                // ... and pair it with another lesson ...
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        // ... in the same timeslot ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        // ... in the same room ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getRoom),
                        // ... and the pair is unique (different id, no reverse pairs)
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                // then penalize each pair with a hard weight.
                .penalize("Room conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint teacherConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTeacher),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Teacher conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint studentGroupConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getStudentGroup),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Student group conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

}

A TimeTable instance wraps all Timeslot, Room, and Lesson instances of a single dataset. Furthermore, because it contains all lessons, each with a specific planning variable state, it is a planning solution and it has a score:

The TimeTable class has an @PlanningSolution annotation, so Red Hat build of OptaPlanner knows that this class contains all of the input and output data.

Specifically, this class is the input of the problem:

However, this class is also the output of the solution:

package com.example.domain;

import java.util.List;

import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningEntityCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningSolution;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.ProblemFactCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.valuerange.ValueRangeProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;

@PlanningSolution
public class TimeTable {

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "timeslotRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Timeslot> timeslotList;

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "roomRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Room> roomList;

    @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty
    private List<Lesson> lessonList;

    @PlanningScore
    private HardSoftScore score;

    private TimeTable() {
    }

    public TimeTable(List<Timeslot> timeslotList, List<Room> roomList,
            List<Lesson> lessonList) {
        this.timeslotList = timeslotList;
        this.roomList = roomList;
        this.lessonList = lessonList;
    }

    // ********************************
    // Getters and setters
    // ********************************

    public List<Timeslot> getTimeslotList() {
        return timeslotList;
    }

    public List<Room> getRoomList() {
        return roomList;
    }

    public List<Lesson> getLessonList() {
        return lessonList;
    }

    public HardSoftScore getScore() {
        return score;
    }

}

Following the same logic, the roomList field also has an @ValueRangeProvider annotation.

The timeslotList and roomList fields have an @ProblemFactCollectionProperty annotation, so your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those instances.

The lessonList has an @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty annotation, so OptaPlanner can change them during solving and your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those too.

Solving planning problems on REST threads causes HTTP timeout issues. Therefore, the Quarkus extension injects a SolverManager, which runs solvers in a separate thread pool and can solve multiple data sets in parallel.

package org.acme.optaplanner.rest;

import java.util.UUID;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.ws.rs.POST;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;

import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.TimeTable;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverJob;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverManager;

@Path("/timeTable")
public class TimeTableResource {

    @Inject
    SolverManager<TimeTable, UUID> solverManager;

    @POST
    @Path("/solve")
    public TimeTable solve(TimeTable problem) {
        UUID problemId = UUID.randomUUID();
        // Submit the problem to start solving
        SolverJob<TimeTable, UUID> solverJob = solverManager.solve(problemId, problem);
        TimeTable solution;
        try {
            // Wait until the solving ends
            solution = solverJob.getFinalBestSolution();
        } catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Solving failed.", e);
        }
        return solution;
    }

}

This initial implementation waits for the solver to finish, which can still cause an HTTP timeout. The complete implementation avoids HTTP timeouts much more elegantly.

If your planning application does not have a termination setting or a termination event, it theoretically runs forever and in reality eventually causes an HTTP timeout error. To prevent this from occurring, use the optaplanner.solver.termination.spent-limit parameter to specify the length of time after which the application terminates. In most applications, set the time to at least five minutes (5m). However, in the Timetable example, limit the solving time to five seconds, which is short enough to avoid the HTTP timeout.

quarkus.optaplanner.solver.termination.spent-limit=5s

After you have created the school timetable project, run it in development mode. In development mode, you can update the application sources and configurations while your application is running. Your changes will appear in the running application.

A good application includes test coverage. Test the constraints and the solver in your timetable project.

package org.acme.optaplanner.solver;

import java.time.DayOfWeek;
import java.time.LocalTime;

import javax.inject.Inject;

import io.quarkus.test.junit.QuarkusTest;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Lesson;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Room;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.TimeTable;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Timeslot;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.optaplanner.test.api.score.stream.ConstraintVerifier;

@QuarkusTest
class TimeTableConstraintProviderTest {

    private static final Room ROOM = new Room("Room1");
    private static final Timeslot TIMESLOT1 = new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(9,0), LocalTime.NOON);
    private static final Timeslot TIMESLOT2 = new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(9,0), LocalTime.NOON);

    @Inject
    ConstraintVerifier<TimeTableConstraintProvider, TimeTable> constraintVerifier;

    @Test
    void roomConflict() {
        Lesson firstLesson = new Lesson(1, "Subject1", "Teacher1", "Group1");
        Lesson conflictingLesson = new Lesson(2, "Subject2", "Teacher2", "Group2");
        Lesson nonConflictingLesson = new Lesson(3, "Subject3", "Teacher3", "Group3");

        firstLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        firstLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT1);

        conflictingLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        conflictingLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT1);

        nonConflictingLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        nonConflictingLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT2);

        constraintVerifier.verifyThat(TimeTableConstraintProvider::roomConflict)
                .given(firstLesson, conflictingLesson, nonConflictingLesson)
                .penalizesBy(1);
    }

}

After you complete the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner school timetable project, you can use logging information to help you fine-tune the constraints in the ConstraintProvider. Review the score calculation speed in the info log file to assess the impact of changes to your constraints. Run the application in debug mode to show every step that your application takes or use trace logging to log every step and every move.

After you create your Quarkus OptaPlanner school timetable application, you can integrate it with a database and create a web-based user interface to display the timetable.

OptaPlanner exposes metrics through Micrometer, a metrics instrumentation library for Java applications. You can use Micrometer with Prometheus to monitor the OptaPlanner solver in the school timetable application.

There are two main approaches to scheduling appointments. The system can either let a person choose an appointment slot (user-selects) or the system assigns a slot and tells the person when and where to attend (system-automatically-assigns). The OptaPlanner vaccination appointment scheduler uses the system-automatically-assigns approach. With the OptaPlanner vaccination appointment scheduler, you can create an application where people provide their information to the system and the system assigns an appointment.

Characteristics of this approach:

This approach solves the problem of vaccinating as many people as possible by using planning constraints to create a score for each person. The person’s score determines when they get an appointment. The higher the person’s score, the better chance they have of receiving an earlier appointment.

11.1.2. The OptaPlanner solver

At the core of OptaPlanner is the solver, the engine that takes the problem data set and overlays the planning constraints and configurations. The problem data set includes all of the information about the people, the vaccines, and the vaccination centers. The solver works through the various combinations of data and eventually determines an optimized appointment schedule with people assigned to vaccination appointments at a specific center. The following illustration shows a schedule that the solver created:

11.1.3. Continuous planning

Continuous planning is the technique of managing one or more upcoming planning periods at the same time and repeating that process monthly, weekly, daily, hourly, or even more frequently. The planning window advances incrementally by a specified interval. The following illustration shows a two week planning window that is updated daily:

The two week planning window is divided in half. The first week is in the published state and the second week is in the draft state. People are assigned to appointments in both the published and draft parts of the planning window. However, only people in the published part of the planning window are notified of their appointments. The other appointments can still change easily in the next run. Doing this gives OptaPlanner the flexibility to change the appointments in the draft part when you run the solver again, if necessary. For example, if a person who needs a second dose has a ready date of Monday and an ideal date of Wednesday, OptaPlanner does not have to give them an appointment for Monday if you can prove OptaPlanner can demonstrate that it can give them a draft appointment later in the week.

You can determine the size of the planning window but just be aware of the size of the problem space. The problem space is all of the various elements that go into creating the schedule. The more days you plan ahead, the larger the problem space.

Download the OptaPlanner vaccination appointment scheduler quick start archive, start it in Quarkus development mode, and view the application in a browser. Quarkus development mode enables you to make changes and update your application while it is running.

When you have completed development work on the OptaPlanner vaccination appointment scheduler in quarkus:dev mode, run the application as a conventional jar file.

To take advantage of the small memory footprint and access speeds that Quarkus offers, compile the OptaPlanner vaccination appointment scheduler in Quarkus native mode.

If you want to see a completed example of the school timetable project for Red Hat build of OptaPlanner with Spring Boot product, download the starter application from the Red Hat Customer Portal.

The goal of the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner timetable project is to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. To do this, add three classes, Timeslot, Lesson, and Room, as shown in the following diagram:

A time slot has no date because a high school schedule just repeats every week. There is no need for continuous planning. A timeslot is called a problem fact because no Timeslot instances change during solving. Such classes do not require any OptaPlanner-specific annotations.

Room instances do not change during solving so Room is also a problem fact.

During solving, OptaPlanner changes the timeslot and room fields of the Lesson class to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. Because OptaPlanner changes these fields, Lesson is a planning entity:

Most of the fields in the previous diagram contain input data, except for the orange fields. A lesson’s timeslot and room fields are unassigned (null) in the input data and assigned (not null) in the output data. OptaPlanner changes these fields during solving. Such fields are called planning variables. In order for OptaPlanner to recognize them, both the timeslot and room fields require an @PlanningVariable annotation. Their containing class, Lesson, requires an @PlanningEntity annotation.

When solving a problem, a score represents the quality of a specific solution. The higher the score the better. Red Hat build of OptaPlanner looks for the best solution, which is the solution with the highest score found in the available time. It might be the optimal solution.

Because the timetable example use case has hard and soft constraints, use the HardSoftScore class to represent the score:

Hard constraints are weighted against other hard constraints. Soft constraints are weighted against other soft constraints. Hard constraints always outweigh soft constraints, regardless of their respective weights.

To calculate the score, you could implement an EasyScoreCalculator class:

public class TimeTableEasyScoreCalculator implements EasyScoreCalculator<TimeTable> {

    @Override
    public HardSoftScore calculateScore(TimeTable timeTable) {
        List<Lesson> lessonList = timeTable.getLessonList();
        int hardScore = 0;
        for (Lesson a : lessonList) {
            for (Lesson b : lessonList) {
                if (a.getTimeslot() != null && a.getTimeslot().equals(b.getTimeslot())
                        && a.getId() < b.getId()) {
                    // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getRoom() != null && a.getRoom().equals(b.getRoom())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getTeacher().equals(b.getTeacher())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getStudentGroup().equals(b.getStudentGroup())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        int softScore = 0;
        // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        return HardSoftScore.of(hardScore, softScore);
    }

}

Unfortunately, this solution does not scale well because it is non-incremental: every time a lesson is assigned to a different time slot or room, all lessons are re-evaluated to calculate the new score.

A better solution is to create a src/main/java/com/example/solver/TimeTableConstraintProvider.java class to perform incremental score calculation. This class uses OptaPlanner’s ConstraintStream API which is inspired by Java 8 Streams and SQL. The ConstraintProvider scales an order of magnitude better than the EasyScoreCalculator: O(n) instead of O(n²).

package com.example.solver;

import com.example.domain.Lesson;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Constraint;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintFactory;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Joiners;

public class TimeTableConstraintProvider implements ConstraintProvider {

    @Override
    public Constraint[] defineConstraints(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        return new Constraint[] {
                // Hard constraints
                roomConflict(constraintFactory),
                teacherConflict(constraintFactory),
                studentGroupConflict(constraintFactory),
                // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        };
    }

    private Constraint roomConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.

        // Select a lesson ...
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                // ... and pair it with another lesson ...
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        // ... in the same timeslot ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        // ... in the same room ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getRoom),
                        // ... and the pair is unique (different id, no reverse pairs)
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                // then penalize each pair with a hard weight.
                .penalize("Room conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint teacherConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTeacher),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Teacher conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint studentGroupConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getStudentGroup),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Student group conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

}

A TimeTable instance wraps all Timeslot, Room, and Lesson instances of a single dataset. Furthermore, because it contains all lessons, each with a specific planning variable state, it is a planning solution and it has a score:

The TimeTable class has an @PlanningSolution annotation, so Red Hat build of OptaPlanner knows that this class contains all of the input and output data.

Specifically, this class is the input of the problem:

However, this class is also the output of the solution:

package com.example.domain;

import java.util.List;

import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningEntityCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningSolution;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.ProblemFactCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.valuerange.ValueRangeProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;

@PlanningSolution
public class TimeTable {

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "timeslotRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Timeslot> timeslotList;

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "roomRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Room> roomList;

    @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty
    private List<Lesson> lessonList;

    @PlanningScore
    private HardSoftScore score;

    private TimeTable() {
    }

    public TimeTable(List<Timeslot> timeslotList, List<Room> roomList,
            List<Lesson> lessonList) {
        this.timeslotList = timeslotList;
        this.roomList = roomList;
        this.lessonList = lessonList;
    }

    // ********************************
    // Getters and setters
    // ********************************

    public List<Timeslot> getTimeslotList() {
        return timeslotList;
    }

    public List<Room> getRoomList() {
        return roomList;
    }

    public List<Lesson> getLessonList() {
        return lessonList;
    }

    public HardSoftScore getScore() {
        return score;
    }

}

Following the same logic, the roomList field also has an @ValueRangeProvider annotation.

The timeslotList and roomList fields have an @ProblemFactCollectionProperty annotation, so your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those instances.

The lessonList has an @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty annotation, so OptaPlanner can change them during solving and your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those too.

Now you are ready to put everything together and create a REST service. But solving planning problems on REST threads causes HTTP timeout issues. Therefore, the Spring Boot starter injects a SolverManager, which runs solvers in a separate thread pool and can solve multiple datasets in parallel.

package com.example.solver;

import java.util.UUID;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;

import com.example.domain.TimeTable;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverJob;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverManager;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/timeTable")
public class TimeTableController {

    @Autowired
    private SolverManager<TimeTable, UUID> solverManager;

    @PostMapping("/solve")
    public TimeTable solve(@RequestBody TimeTable problem) {
        UUID problemId = UUID.randomUUID();
        // Submit the problem to start solving
        SolverJob<TimeTable, UUID> solverJob = solverManager.solve(problemId, problem);
        TimeTable solution;
        try {
            // Wait until the solving ends
            solution = solverJob.getFinalBestSolution();
        } catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Solving failed.", e);
        }
        return solution;
    }

}

In this example, the initial implementation waits for the solver to finish, which can still cause an HTTP timeout. The complete implementation avoids HTTP timeouts much more elegantly.

If your planning application does not have a termination setting or a termination event, it theoretically runs forever and in reality eventually causes an HTTP timeout error. To prevent this from occurring, use the optaplanner.solver.termination.spent-limit parameter to specify the length of time after which the application terminates. In most applications, set the time to at least five minutes (5m). However, in the Timetable example, limit the solving time to five seconds, which is short enough to avoid the HTTP timeout.

quarkus.optaplanner.solver.termination.spent-limit=5s

After you complete the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner Spring Boot timetable project, package everything into a single executable JAR file driven by a standard Java main() method.

$ curl -i -X POST http://localhost:8080/timeTable/solve -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d '{"timeslotList":[{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"08:30:00","endTime":"09:30:00"},{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"09:30:00","endTime":"10:30:00"}],"roomList":[{"name":"Room A"},{"name":"Room B"}],"lessonList":[{"id":1,"subject":"Math","teacher":"A. Turing","studentGroup":"9th grade"},{"id":2,"subject":"Chemistry","teacher":"M. Curie","studentGroup":"9th grade"},{"id":3,"subject":"French","teacher":"M. Curie","studentGroup":"10th grade"},{"id":4,"subject":"History","teacher":"I. Jones","studentGroup":"10th grade"}]}'

HTTP/1.1 200
Content-Type: application/json
...

{"timeslotList":...,"roomList":...,"lessonList":[{"id":1,"subject":"Math","teacher":"A. Turing","studentGroup":"9th grade","timeslot":{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"08:30:00","endTime":"09:30:00"},"room":{"name":"Room A"}},{"id":2,"subject":"Chemistry","teacher":"M. Curie","studentGroup":"9th grade","timeslot":{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"09:30:00","endTime":"10:30:00"},"room":{"name":"Room A"}},{"id":3,"subject":"French","teacher":"M. Curie","studentGroup":"10th grade","timeslot":{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"08:30:00","endTime":"09:30:00"},"room":{"name":"Room B"}},{"id":4,"subject":"History","teacher":"I. Jones","studentGroup":"10th grade","timeslot":{"dayOfWeek":"MONDAY","startTime":"09:30:00","endTime":"10:30:00"},"room":{"name":"Room B"}}],"score":"0hard/0soft"}

... Solving started: time spent (33), best score (-8init/0hard/0soft), environment mode (REPRODUCIBLE), random (JDK with seed 0).
... Construction Heuristic phase (0) ended: time spent (73), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (459/sec), step total (4).
... Local Search phase (1) ended: time spent (5000), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (28949/sec), step total (28398).
... Solving ended: time spent (5000), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (28524/sec), phase total (2), environment mode (REPRODUCIBLE).

package com.example.solver;

import java.time.DayOfWeek;
import java.time.LocalTime;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import com.example.domain.Lesson;
import com.example.domain.Room;
import com.example.domain.TimeTable;
import com.example.domain.Timeslot;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Timeout;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.test.context.SpringBootTest;

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertFalse;
import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertNotNull;
import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertTrue;

@SpringBootTest(properties = {
        "optaplanner.solver.termination.spent-limit=1h", // Effectively disable this termination in favor of the best-score-limit
        "optaplanner.solver.termination.best-score-limit=0hard/*soft"})
public class TimeTableControllerTest {

    @Autowired
    private TimeTableController timeTableController;

    @Test
    @Timeout(600_000)
    public void solve() {
        TimeTable problem = generateProblem();
        TimeTable solution = timeTableController.solve(problem);
        assertFalse(solution.getLessonList().isEmpty());
        for (Lesson lesson : solution.getLessonList()) {
            assertNotNull(lesson.getTimeslot());
            assertNotNull(lesson.getRoom());
        }
        assertTrue(solution.getScore().isFeasible());
    }

    private TimeTable generateProblem() {
        List<Timeslot> timeslotList = new ArrayList<>();
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(8, 30), LocalTime.of(9, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(9, 30), LocalTime.of(10, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(10, 30), LocalTime.of(11, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(13, 30), LocalTime.of(14, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(14, 30), LocalTime.of(15, 30)));

        List<Room> roomList = new ArrayList<>();
        roomList.add(new Room("Room A"));
        roomList.add(new Room("Room B"));
        roomList.add(new Room("Room C"));

        List<Lesson> lessonList = new ArrayList<>();
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(101L, "Math", "B. May", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(102L, "Physics", "M. Curie", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(103L, "Geography", "M. Polo", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(104L, "English", "I. Jones", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(105L, "Spanish", "P. Cruz", "9th grade"));

        lessonList.add(new Lesson(201L, "Math", "B. May", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(202L, "Chemistry", "M. Curie", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(203L, "History", "I. Jones", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(204L, "English", "P. Cruz", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(205L, "French", "M. Curie", "10th grade"));
        return new TimeTable(timeslotList, roomList, lessonList);
    }

}

After you create the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner application example with Spring Boot, add database and UI integration.

OptaPlanner exposes metrics through Micrometer, a metrics instrumentation library for Java applications. You can use Micrometer with Prometheus to monitor the OptaPlanner solver in the school timetable application.

You can use Maven or Gradle for the OptaPlanner school timetable application. After you create the build files, add the following dependencies:

The goal of the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner timetable project is to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. To do this, add three classes, Timeslot, Lesson, and Room, as shown in the following diagram:

A time slot has no date because a high school schedule just repeats every week. There is no need for continuous planning. A timeslot is called a problem fact because no Timeslot instances change during solving. Such classes do not require any OptaPlanner-specific annotations.

Room instances do not change during solving so Room is also a problem fact.

During solving, OptaPlanner changes the timeslot and room fields of the Lesson class to assign each lesson to a time slot and a room. Because OptaPlanner changes these fields, Lesson is a planning entity:

Most of the fields in the previous diagram contain input data, except for the orange fields. A lesson’s timeslot and room fields are unassigned (null) in the input data and assigned (not null) in the output data. OptaPlanner changes these fields during solving. Such fields are called planning variables. In order for OptaPlanner to recognize them, both the timeslot and room fields require an @PlanningVariable annotation. Their containing class, Lesson, requires an @PlanningEntity annotation.

When solving a problem, a score represents the quality of a specific solution. The higher the score the better. Red Hat build of OptaPlanner looks for the best solution, which is the solution with the highest score found in the available time. It might be the optimal solution.

Because the timetable example use case has hard and soft constraints, use the HardSoftScore class to represent the score:

Hard constraints are weighted against other hard constraints. Soft constraints are weighted against other soft constraints. Hard constraints always outweigh soft constraints, regardless of their respective weights.

To calculate the score, you could implement an EasyScoreCalculator class:

public class TimeTableEasyScoreCalculator implements EasyScoreCalculator<TimeTable> {

    @Override
    public HardSoftScore calculateScore(TimeTable timeTable) {
        List<Lesson> lessonList = timeTable.getLessonList();
        int hardScore = 0;
        for (Lesson a : lessonList) {
            for (Lesson b : lessonList) {
                if (a.getTimeslot() != null && a.getTimeslot().equals(b.getTimeslot())
                        && a.getId() < b.getId()) {
                    // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getRoom() != null && a.getRoom().equals(b.getRoom())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getTeacher().equals(b.getTeacher())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                    // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
                    if (a.getStudentGroup().equals(b.getStudentGroup())) {
                        hardScore--;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        int softScore = 0;
        // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        return HardSoftScore.of(hardScore, softScore);
    }

}

Unfortunately, this solution does not scale well because it is non-incremental: every time a lesson is assigned to a different time slot or room, all lessons are re-evaluated to calculate the new score.

A better solution is to create a src/main/java/com/example/solver/TimeTableConstraintProvider.java class to perform incremental score calculation. This class uses OptaPlanner’s ConstraintStream API which is inspired by Java 8 Streams and SQL. The ConstraintProvider scales an order of magnitude better than the EasyScoreCalculator: O(n) instead of O(n²).

package com.example.solver;

import com.example.domain.Lesson;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Constraint;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintFactory;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.ConstraintProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.stream.Joiners;

public class TimeTableConstraintProvider implements ConstraintProvider {

    @Override
    public Constraint[] defineConstraints(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        return new Constraint[] {
                // Hard constraints
                roomConflict(constraintFactory),
                teacherConflict(constraintFactory),
                studentGroupConflict(constraintFactory),
                // Soft constraints are only implemented in the "complete" implementation
        };
    }

    private Constraint roomConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A room can accommodate at most one lesson at the same time.

        // Select a lesson ...
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                // ... and pair it with another lesson ...
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        // ... in the same timeslot ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        // ... in the same room ...
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getRoom),
                        // ... and the pair is unique (different id, no reverse pairs)
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                // then penalize each pair with a hard weight.
                .penalize("Room conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint teacherConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A teacher can teach at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTeacher),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Teacher conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

    private Constraint studentGroupConflict(ConstraintFactory constraintFactory) {
        // A student can attend at most one lesson at the same time.
        return constraintFactory.from(Lesson.class)
                .join(Lesson.class,
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getTimeslot),
                        Joiners.equal(Lesson::getStudentGroup),
                        Joiners.lessThan(Lesson::getId))
                .penalize("Student group conflict", HardSoftScore.ONE_HARD);
    }

}

A TimeTable instance wraps all Timeslot, Room, and Lesson instances of a single dataset. Furthermore, because it contains all lessons, each with a specific planning variable state, it is a planning solution and it has a score:

The TimeTable class has an @PlanningSolution annotation, so Red Hat build of OptaPlanner knows that this class contains all of the input and output data.

Specifically, this class is the input of the problem:

However, this class is also the output of the solution:

package com.example.domain;

import java.util.List;

import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningEntityCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningScore;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.PlanningSolution;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.solution.ProblemFactCollectionProperty;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.domain.valuerange.ValueRangeProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.score.buildin.hardsoft.HardSoftScore;

@PlanningSolution
public class TimeTable {

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "timeslotRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Timeslot> timeslotList;

    @ValueRangeProvider(id = "roomRange")
    @ProblemFactCollectionProperty
    private List<Room> roomList;

    @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty
    private List<Lesson> lessonList;

    @PlanningScore
    private HardSoftScore score;

    private TimeTable() {
    }

    public TimeTable(List<Timeslot> timeslotList, List<Room> roomList,
            List<Lesson> lessonList) {
        this.timeslotList = timeslotList;
        this.roomList = roomList;
        this.lessonList = lessonList;
    }

    // ********************************
    // Getters and setters
    // ********************************

    public List<Timeslot> getTimeslotList() {
        return timeslotList;
    }

    public List<Room> getRoomList() {
        return roomList;
    }

    public List<Lesson> getLessonList() {
        return lessonList;
    }

    public HardSoftScore getScore() {
        return score;
    }

}

Following the same logic, the roomList field also has an @ValueRangeProvider annotation.

The timeslotList and roomList fields have an @ProblemFactCollectionProperty annotation, so your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those instances.

The lessonList has an @PlanningEntityCollectionProperty annotation, so OptaPlanner can change them during solving and your TimeTableConstraintProvider can select from those too.

After you have created all of the components of the school timetable application, you will put them all together in the TimeTableApp.java class.

The main() method performs the following tasks:

Typically, an application has a single SolverFactory to build a new Solver instance for each problem data set to solve. A SolverFactory is thread-safe, but a Solver is not. For the school timetable application, there is only one data set, so only one Solver instance.

Here is the completed TimeTableApp.java class:

package org.acme.schooltimetabling;

import java.time.DayOfWeek;
import java.time.Duration;
import java.time.LocalTime;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.stream.Collectors;

import org.acme.schooltimetabling.domain.Lesson;
import org.acme.schooltimetabling.domain.Room;
import org.acme.schooltimetabling.domain.TimeTable;
import org.acme.schooltimetabling.domain.Timeslot;
import org.acme.schooltimetabling.solver.TimeTableConstraintProvider;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.Solver;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverFactory;
import org.optaplanner.core.config.solver.SolverConfig;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

public class TimeTableApp {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(TimeTableApp.class);

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SolverFactory<TimeTable> solverFactory = SolverFactory.create(new SolverConfig()
                .withSolutionClass(TimeTable.class)
                .withEntityClasses(Lesson.class)
                .withConstraintProviderClass(TimeTableConstraintProvider.class)
                // The solver runs only for 5 seconds on this small data set.
                // It's recommended to run for at least 5 minutes ("5m") otherwise.
                .withTerminationSpentLimit(Duration.ofSeconds(10)));

        // Load the problem
        TimeTable problem = generateDemoData();

        // Solve the problem
        Solver<TimeTable> solver = solverFactory.buildSolver();
        TimeTable solution = solver.solve(problem);

        // Visualize the solution
        printTimetable(solution);
    }

    public static TimeTable generateDemoData() {
        List<Timeslot> timeslotList = new ArrayList<>(10);
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(8, 30), LocalTime.of(9, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(9, 30), LocalTime.of(10, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(10, 30), LocalTime.of(11, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(13, 30), LocalTime.of(14, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(14, 30), LocalTime.of(15, 30)));

        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(8, 30), LocalTime.of(9, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(9, 30), LocalTime.of(10, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(10, 30), LocalTime.of(11, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(13, 30), LocalTime.of(14, 30)));
        timeslotList.add(new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(14, 30), LocalTime.of(15, 30)));

        List<Room> roomList = new ArrayList<>(3);
        roomList.add(new Room("Room A"));
        roomList.add(new Room("Room B"));
        roomList.add(new Room("Room C"));

        List<Lesson> lessonList = new ArrayList<>();
        long id = 0;
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Math", "A. Turing", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Math", "A. Turing", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Physics", "M. Curie", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Chemistry", "M. Curie", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Biology", "C. Darwin", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "History", "I. Jones", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "English", "I. Jones", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "English", "I. Jones", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Spanish", "P. Cruz", "9th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Spanish", "P. Cruz", "9th grade"));

        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Math", "A. Turing", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Math", "A. Turing", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Math", "A. Turing", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Physics", "M. Curie", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Chemistry", "M. Curie", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "French", "M. Curie", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Geography", "C. Darwin", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "History", "I. Jones", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "English", "P. Cruz", "10th grade"));
        lessonList.add(new Lesson(id++, "Spanish", "P. Cruz", "10th grade"));

        return new TimeTable(timeslotList, roomList, lessonList);
    }

    private static void printTimetable(TimeTable timeTable) {
        LOGGER.info("");
        List<Room> roomList = timeTable.getRoomList();
        List<Lesson> lessonList = timeTable.getLessonList();
        Map<Timeslot, Map<Room, List<Lesson>>> lessonMap = lessonList.stream()
                .filter(lesson -> lesson.getTimeslot() != null && lesson.getRoom() != null)
                .collect(Collectors.groupingBy(Lesson::getTimeslot, Collectors.groupingBy(Lesson::getRoom)));
        LOGGER.info("|            | " + roomList.stream()
                .map(room -> String.format("%-10s", room.getName())).collect(Collectors.joining(" | ")) + " |");
        LOGGER.info("|" + "------------|".repeat(roomList.size() + 1));
        for (Timeslot timeslot : timeTable.getTimeslotList()) {
            List<List<Lesson>> cellList = roomList.stream()
                    .map(room -> {
                        Map<Room, List<Lesson>> byRoomMap = lessonMap.get(timeslot);
                        if (byRoomMap == null) {
                            return Collections.<Lesson>emptyList();
                        }
                        List<Lesson> cellLessonList = byRoomMap.get(room);
                        if (cellLessonList == null) {
                            return Collections.<Lesson>emptyList();
                        }
                        return cellLessonList;
                    })
                    .collect(Collectors.toList());

            LOGGER.info("| " + String.format("%-10s",
                    timeslot.getDayOfWeek().toString().substring(0, 3) + " " + timeslot.getStartTime()) + " | "
                    + cellList.stream().map(cellLessonList -> String.format("%-10s",
                            cellLessonList.stream().map(Lesson::getSubject).collect(Collectors.joining(", "))))
                            .collect(Collectors.joining(" | "))
                    + " |");
            LOGGER.info("|            | "
                    + cellList.stream().map(cellLessonList -> String.format("%-10s",
                            cellLessonList.stream().map(Lesson::getTeacher).collect(Collectors.joining(", "))))
                            .collect(Collectors.joining(" | "))
                    + " |");
            LOGGER.info("|            | "
                    + cellList.stream().map(cellLessonList -> String.format("%-10s",
                            cellLessonList.stream().map(Lesson::getStudentGroup).collect(Collectors.joining(", "))))
                            .collect(Collectors.joining(" | "))
                    + " |");
            LOGGER.info("|" + "------------|".repeat(roomList.size() + 1));
        }
        List<Lesson> unassignedLessons = lessonList.stream()
                .filter(lesson -> lesson.getTimeslot() == null || lesson.getRoom() == null)
                .collect(Collectors.toList());
        if (!unassignedLessons.isEmpty()) {
            LOGGER.info("");
            LOGGER.info("Unassigned lessons");
            for (Lesson lesson : unassignedLessons) {
                LOGGER.info("  " + lesson.getSubject() + " - " + lesson.getTeacher() + " - " + lesson.getStudentGroup());
            }
        }
    }

}

The main() method first creates the SolverFactory:

SolverFactory<TimeTable> solverFactory = SolverFactory.create(new SolverConfig()
        .withSolutionClass(TimeTable.class)
        .withEntityClasses(Lesson.class)
        .withConstraintProviderClass(TimeTableConstraintProvider.class)
        // The solver runs only for 5 seconds on this small data set.
        // It's recommended to run for at least 5 minutes ("5m") otherwise.
        .withTerminationSpentLimit(Duration.ofSeconds(5)));

The SolverFactory creation registers the @PlanningSolution class, the @PlanningEntity classes, and the ConstraintProvider class, all of which you created earlier.

Without a termination setting or a terminationEarly() event, the solver runs forever. To avoid that, the solver limits the solving time to five seconds.

After five seconds, the main() method loads the problem, solves it, and prints the solution:

        // Load the problem
        TimeTable problem = generateDemoData();

        // Solve the problem
        Solver<TimeTable> solver = solverFactory.buildSolver();
        TimeTable solution = solver.solve(problem);

        // Visualize the solution
        printTimetable(solution);

The solve() method doesn’t return instantly. It runs for five seconds before returning the best solution.

OptaPlanner returns the best solution found in the available termination time. Due to the nature of NP-hard problems, the best solution might not be optimal, especially for larger data sets. Increase the termination time to potentially find a better solution.

The generateDemoData() method generates the school timetable problem to solve.

The printTimetable() method prettyprints the timetable to the console, so it’s easy to determine visually whether or not it’s a good schedule.

Now that you have completed all of the components of the school timetable Java application, you are ready to put them all together in the TimeTableApp.java class and run it.

The info log shows what OptaPlanner did in those five seconds:

... Solving started: time spent (33), best score (-8init/0hard/0soft), environment mode (REPRODUCIBLE), random (JDK with seed 0).
... Construction Heuristic phase (0) ended: time spent (73), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (459/sec), step total (4).
... Local Search phase (1) ended: time spent (5000), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (28949/sec), step total (28398).
... Solving ended: time spent (5000), best score (0hard/0soft), score calculation speed (28524/sec), phase total (2), environment mode (REPRODUCIBLE).

A good application includes test coverage. Test the constraints and the solver in your timetable project.

package org.acme.optaplanner.solver;

import java.time.DayOfWeek;
import java.time.LocalTime;

import javax.inject.Inject;

import io.quarkus.test.junit.QuarkusTest;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Lesson;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Room;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.TimeTable;
import org.acme.optaplanner.domain.Timeslot;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.optaplanner.test.api.score.stream.ConstraintVerifier;

@QuarkusTest
class TimeTableConstraintProviderTest {

    private static final Room ROOM = new Room("Room1");
    private static final Timeslot TIMESLOT1 = new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.MONDAY, LocalTime.of(9,0), LocalTime.NOON);
    private static final Timeslot TIMESLOT2 = new Timeslot(DayOfWeek.TUESDAY, LocalTime.of(9,0), LocalTime.NOON);

    @Inject
    ConstraintVerifier<TimeTableConstraintProvider, TimeTable> constraintVerifier;

    @Test
    void roomConflict() {
        Lesson firstLesson = new Lesson(1, "Subject1", "Teacher1", "Group1");
        Lesson conflictingLesson = new Lesson(2, "Subject2", "Teacher2", "Group2");
        Lesson nonConflictingLesson = new Lesson(3, "Subject3", "Teacher3", "Group3");

        firstLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        firstLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT1);

        conflictingLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        conflictingLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT1);

        nonConflictingLesson.setRoom(ROOM);
        nonConflictingLesson.setTimeslot(TIMESLOT2);

        constraintVerifier.verifyThat(TimeTableConstraintProvider::roomConflict)
                .given(firstLesson, conflictingLesson, nonConflictingLesson)
                .penalizesBy(1);
    }

}

After you complete the Red Hat build of OptaPlanner school timetable project, you can use logging information to help you fine-tune the constraints in the ConstraintProvider. Review the score calculation speed in the info log file to assess the impact of changes to your constraints. Run the application in debug mode to show every step that your application takes or use trace logging to log every step and every move.

OptaPlanner exposes metrics through Micrometer, a metrics instrumentation library for Java applications. You can use Micrometer with Prometheus to monitor the OptaPlanner solver in the school timetable application.

The employee rostering starter application assigns employees to shifts on various positions in an organization. For example, you can use the application to distribute shifts in a hospital between nurses, guard duty shifts across a number of locations, or shifts on an assembly line between workers.

Optimal employee rostering must take a number of variables into account. For example, different skills can be required for shifts in different positions. Also, some employees might be unavailable for some time slots or might prefer a particular time slot. Moreover, an employee can have a contract that limits the number of hours that the employee can work in a single time period.

The Red Hat build of OptaPlanner rules for this starter application use both hard and soft constraints. During an optimization, the planning engine may not violate hard constraints, for example, if an employee is unavailable (out sick), or that an employee cannot work two spots in a single shift. The planning engine tries to adhere to soft constraints, such as an employee’s preference to not work a specific shift, but can violate them if the optimal solution requires it.

You can build the employee rostering starter application from the source code and run it as a JAR file.

Alternatively, you can use your IDE, for example, Eclipse (including Red Hat CodeReady Studio), to build and run the application.

The employee rostering starter application consists of the following principal components:

You can build and use these components independently. In particular, you can implement a different user interface and use the REST API to call the server.

In addition to the two main components, the employee rostering template contains a generator of random source data (useful for demonstration and testing purposes) and a benchmarking application.

The modules contain a number of files, including Java classes. This document lists all the modules, as well as the classes and other files that contain the key information for the employee rostering calculations.

To modify the employee rostering starter application to suit your needs, you must change the rules that govern the optimization process. You must also ensure that the data structures include the required data and provide the required calculations for the rules. If the required data is not present in the user interface, you must also modify the user interface.

The following procedure outlines the general approach to modifying the employee rostering starter application.

The employee rostering starter application assigns employees to shifts on various positions in an organization. For example, you can use the application to distribute shifts in a hospital between nurses, guard duty shifts across a number of locations, or shifts on an assembly line between workers.

Optimal employee rostering must take a number of variables into account. For example, different skills can be required for shifts in different positions. Also, some employees might be unavailable for some time slots or might prefer a particular time slot. Moreover, an employee can have a contract that limits the number of hours that the employee can work in a single time period.

The Red Hat build of OptaPlanner rules for this starter application use both hard and soft constraints. During an optimization, the planning engine may not violate hard constraints, for example, if an employee is unavailable (out sick), or that an employee cannot work two spots in a single shift. The planning engine tries to adhere to soft constraints, such as an employee’s preference to not work a specific shift, but can violate them if the optimal solution requires it.

Use the runOnOpenShift.sh script to deploy the Employee Rostering starter application to Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. The runOnOpenShift.sh shell script is available in the Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7.13.5 Kogito and OptaPlanner 8 Decision Services Quickstarts distribution.

The runOnOpenShift.sh script builds and packages the application source code locally and uploads it to the OpenShift environment for deployment. This method requires Java Development Kit, Apache Maven, and a bash shell command line.

You can use the web interface to use the Employee Rostering starter application. The interface is developed in ReactJS. You can also access the REST API to create a custom user interface as necessary.

15.3.13. Viewing and editing the rotation pattern

The rotation pattern enables you to add, move, and delete shifts so you can manage your employee resources efficiently. It is defined by time buckets and seats.

• A time bucket describes a time slot (for example, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) for a particular spot or location (A) (for example, Anaesthetics), over two or more days, and any skills that are required (for example, firearm training).
• A seat (B) is an employee assignment for a particular day in a specific time bucket.
• An employee stub is an icon that represents an employee that is available to be assigned to a time bucket. Employee stubs are listed in the Employee Stub List.

For more information about the rotation pattern, see Section 15.3.2, “The rotation pattern”.

Procedure

1. Click the Rotation tab to view and edit the rotation pattern.
2. Select a spot from the Rotation menu.
3. Click Add New Time Bucket. The Creating Working Time Bucket dialog is displayed.
4. Specify a start and end time, select any additional required skills, select the days for this time bucket, and click Save. The unassigned seats for that time bucket appears on the Rotation page organized by time ranges.
5. To create an employee stub list so that you can add employees to the rotation, click Edit Employee Stub List.
6. In the Edit Employee Stub List dialog, click Add Employee and select an employee from the list.
7. Add all of the employees required for this stub list and click Save. The employees appear above the time buckets on the Rotation page.
8. Click an employee icon to select an employee from the employee stub list.

9. Click and drag the mouse over the seats of a time bucket to assign the selected employee to those seats. The seat is populated with the employee icon.

   Note

   A time bucket can only have one employee assigned to it for each day. To add multiple employees to the same time bucket, copy the time bucket and change the employee name as required.

10. To provision the schedule, click Scheduling and select the spot that you created the rotation for.
11. Click Provision and specify the date range.
12. Deselect the spots that you do not want to include in this schedule.
13. Click the arrow next to the selected spot and deselect any time buckets that you do not want to use in your schedule.
14. Click Provision Shifts. The calendar is populated with shifts generated from the time buckets.
15. To modify a shift, click a generated shift on the calendar.

The main purpose of many businesses is to transport various types of cargo. The goal of these businesses is to deliver a piece of cargo from the loading point to a destination and use its vehicle fleet in the most efficient way. One of the main objectives is to minimize travel costs which are measured in either time or distance.

This type of optimization problem is referred to as the vehicle routing problem (VRP) and has many variations.

Red Hat build of OptaPlanner can solve many of these vehicle routing variations and provides solution examples. OptaPlanner enables developers to focus on modeling business rules and requirements instead of learning constraint programming theory. OptaWeb Vehicle Routing expands the vehicle routing capabilities of OptaPlanner by providing a starter application that answers questions such as these:

OptaWeb Vehicle Routing uses OpenStreetMap (OSM) data files. For information about OpenStreetMap, see the OpenStreetMap web site.

Use the following definitions when working with OptaWeb Vehicle Routing:

Region: An arbitrary area on the map of Earth, represented by an OSM file. A region can be a country, a city, a continent, or a group of countries that are frequently used together. For example, the DACH region includes Germany (DE), Austria (AT), and Switzerland (CH).

Country code: A two-letter code assigned to a country by the ISO-3166 standard. You can use a country code to filter geosearch results. Because you can work with a region that spans multiple countries (for example, the DACH region), OptaWeb Vehicle Routing accepts a list of country codes so that geosearch filtering can be used with such regions. For a list of country codes, see ISO 3166 Country Codes

Geosearch: A type of query where you provide an address or a place name of a region as the search keyword and receive a number of GPS locations as a result. The number of locations returned depends on how unique the search keyword is. Because most place names are not unique, filter out nonrelevant results by including only places in the country or countries that are in your working region.

You must download and prepare the deployment files before building and deploying OptaWeb Vehicle Routing.