On the design and development of object-oriented scheduling systems

In this paper, the authors describe the architecture of an object-oriented scheduling system. First, a mathematical framework is presented that is based on set theory. Then a number of basic as well as more specialized methods are defined which can be applied on the entities of any decision support system. The principal objects of a scheduling system are defined, as well as the methods specifically designed for the manipulation of the schedules. The object base design, the schedule generator design and the user interface design are then discussed in detail.