Re: A neutral challenge.

"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_golden.net> skrev i en meddelelse news:PykKa.513$ZO6.69202991_at_mantis.golden.net...
> "Peter Koch Larsen" <pkl_at_mailme.dk> wrote in message
> news:61c84197.0306250318.71c26eca_at_posting.google.com...
> > Costins challenge was interesting to me, being unfamiliar with oo-dbms
> > systems. I was not sure that it was quite fair, however, it being very
> > much non oo-like.
> > I grab the opportunity to propose another challenge to a conceptually
> > very simple problem: scheduling of a meeting.
> >
> > Consider a group of persons who are to have a meeting. This meeting
> > has to take place at a time where no other meeting for the people
> > involved takes place, of course.
> > Each person has a calender where the available (or if you prefer so,
> > the unavailable time) for that person is noted. As an example, John
> > might have this calender:
> >
> > Mon:
> > 11-16: available
> > Tuesday:
> > 9-11: available
> > 13-16: available
> >
> > Andrea might have this calender.
> >
> > Monday:
> > 9-15: available
> > Tuesday:
> > 10-12: available
> > 13-16: available
> >
> > The program should list periods where alle attendees are available.
> > For John and Andrea, the result would be:
> >
> > Available:
> > Monday:
> > 11-15
> > Tuesday:
> > 10-11
> > 13-16
> >
> > The user should then be able to pick one of the available time-frames
> > and let the system schedule the meeting at that frame.
> >
> > I believe this challenge is interesting for both camps as this is a
> > realistic problem that often has to be solved in practival life. Also
> > this gives the oo-oriented camp the possibility to have some slight
> > form of object-orientation (the intervals) and it is not a problem,
> > that may be modeled directly via some relational join-operation.
> > After having solved this problem, it would be interesting to extend
> > the solution to involve not only persons but also other kind of
> > resources (e.g. a conference room and a projector). What changes would
> > you hace to but into the original solution (assuming of course that
> > this problem had been anticipated berforehand).
> > I do not propose to solve this problem myself, but it would be
> > interesting to see if others could sketch a solution using their own
> > favorite DBMS. Of course, the solution must be sound with regards to
> > criteria such as time-consumption and safety w.r.t. multiple updates.
> >
> > Kind regards
> > Peter
>
> Does 'Monday' represent a specific date or a recurring availability on
every
> monday?
>
>

My intention was that "Monday" was a specific date. Recurring time-schedules could be a fringe benefit if implemented. A vague description was intentional, however (although perhaps not wrt. dates ;-), as the proper layout of tables and so on could possibly be influenced by the chosen language.

Kind regards
Peter Received on Thu Jun 26 2003 - 00:42:40 CEST