The Doctor Rostering Problem - Asser Fahrenholz

Chapter 6. The DRP Program 35
Due to the small size of the medical practice in this project, existing commercial so-
lutions, such as PLANE (Burke et al. [3]) or ANSOS (Warner et al. [24]), are simply
too advanced. They would probably work fine after configuration had been done, but
using these systems in a small medical practice would be overkill. This supports the
development of a DRP program, targeted only at small sized medical practices.
6.2 The Graphical User Interface
Several libraries was used in the development of the application, the main being JCal-
endar (Toedter [23]), which is for graphically picking a date.
The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is designed to be accessible, providing an overview
of the problem, allowing for easy changes to the problem and the solution, while main-
taining a simple, non-obtrusive layout. The GUI is designed with the end user in mind,
however, there has been little communication with the end user regarding the design.
Figure 6.1 shows the main application window that appears when starting the program.
Figure 6.1: The main window
One of the first areas of the GUI the user will notice is the calendar. This is the view of
the schedule and the shifts on each day. No information will appear until a schedule is
generated or a set of shifts and wishes have been imported. The menu bar contains two
menus, file and settings. Through the file menu (figure 6.2 on the next page), the user
can save and load the schedule in various forms.