Web-based expert system for class schedule planning using JESS

Making a class schedule for next semester that suits a student's interests and meets overall graduation requirements within a time frame is not always easy. The changing requirements, transferable units of different schools, the availability of classes and other factors can often cause mistakes in the scheduling process. An automated tool can help students to identify scheduling mistakes and compare available options. This paper introduces a web-based expert system, called class schedule planner (CSP). CSP encapsulates class-scheduling knowledge and gives intelligent scheduling advises to students. CSP has a set of Web forms to collect inputs from the users and then translates the request into facts. It uses JESS (Java expert system shell) as a tool to process the facts and rules to generate feasible schedules for the students. Integration of data from various sources into JESS facts and rules is done by CSP controller and XML translator. The translated result from JESS is integrated with the Web presentation using JSP (Java server page). The unique technical contribution of this work is that unlike most other expert systems that require static expert knowledge this expert system allows dynamic management of knowledge in real time using Web interface.