Constraint satisfaction problems can be expressed very elegantly in state-based formal methods such as B. But can such specifications be directly used for solving real-life problems? In other words, can a formal model be more than a design artefact but also be used at runtime for inference and problem solving? We will try and answer this important question in the present paper with regard to the university timetabling problem. We report on an ongoing project to build a curriculum timetable validation tool where we use a formal model as the basis to validate timetables from a student’s perspective and to support incremental modification of timetables. In this article we describe the problem domain, the formalization in B and our approach to execute the formal model in a production system using ProB .

中文翻译：

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基于模型的大学时间表验证和改进问题解决

约束满足问题可以用 B 等基于状态的形式化方法非常优雅地表达。但是这样的规范可以直接用于解决现实生活中的问题吗？换句话说，一个正式的模型是否可以不仅仅是一个设计工件，还可以在运行时用于推理和解决问题？我们将在本文中尝试回答这个关于大学时间安排问题的重要问题。我们报告了一个正在进行的项目，以建立一个课程时间表验证工具，我们使用正式模型作为基础，从学生的角度验证时间表并支持对时间表的增量修改。在本文中，我们描述了问题域、B 中的形式化以及我们在生产系统中执行形式模型的方法概率.