Allocating participants choices to a workshop

[Dennis]

I have an events management database (MS Access sample)
that allows me to input students names, allocate them to
a range of workshops etc. The workshops table has a
field which provides for maximum class sizes to be
entered and as the students are registered, the class
size is reduced by one. I would like to be able to
automate how the students are allocated to a workshop
i.e. their first choice, second choice thus ensuring that
students get at least some of their top choices.
Currently this is done manually, moving students who have
a fourth choice and swapping with someone who has been
allocated better choices, if that makes sense! Is this
achievable? How? Any suggestions greatly appreciated.
Regards
Dennis

 

[Tim Ferguson]

I would like to be able to
automate how the students are allocated to a workshop
i.e. their first choice, second choice thus ensuring that
students get at least some of their top choices.

This is probably do-able in VBA but it would not be nice. A better choice
would a declarative language like Prolog, which will simply take all the
criteria and attempt to maximise the students' happiness. I _think_ you get
a prolog interpreter which will plug in as a COM component in a VBA
program. Long time since I touched any of that stuff though.

A medium way of doing this would be using Excel. I am picturing something
where you would do the allocations manually by dragging names around the
worksheet, but the spreadsheet would check who is happy and who is hard
done by, which classes are oversubscribed, and so on.

Hope that helps


Tim F