[rules-users] Your suggestions for rules for pretty simple problem

[Jason Parekh]

I'm new to constraint programming and Drools Planner.  I've read through the
docs and built some rules that would probably get me to the right answer,
eventually :)

I was hoping to get your suggestions for better concrete rules.

The problem is I need to order items in a performance with the following
logical rules:
1) All items of the same category must appear together.
2) A performer can be in multiple items, but ideally there'd be at least
three items between any of her two items

The approaches I took are:
- For (1), count the number of transitions from one category to another.
Subtract this to the hard score.
- For (2), three separate rules, each of which assert that an item at
position i does not share performers with an item at position i+1, i+2 and
i+3 (one of these per rule).  The number of shared performers would be
subtracted from the hard score.

The scoring and my choice for construction heuristic (FIRST_FIT) are just
naive selections.  I haven't gotten to optimizing either of these -- just
wanted to check with you guys to make sure my rules are sane.

Thanks in advance,
jason
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