[rules-users] Design queries on use of Drools

[David Godfrey]

Hi,

I am working on a prototype of integrating our existing application with
Drools, and would appreciate some advice/thoughts on my current design.

We have an application through which messages flow, and at certain points in
the process flow of these messages, business logic is encapsulated using
Java-based exits. I want to replace these exits with business rules, and
allow users to maintain the rules through Guvnor.

I have created a fact model, and also a simple Java class to invoke the
RuleAgent and execute my rules. At each processing step in my application, I
would like to expose a different set of rules, so I have defined a package
for each step, and assigned rules to the relevant package. At runtime, I am
hoping I can then just expose my model class to the relevant set of rules
for the processing step in question.

Does this sound like the best way to use Drools to solve the problem? Any
other considerations?

Also, can anyone point me in the direction of some useful information about
"functions"  in the context of Guvnor? I would like to allow users to define
rules using the Guided Rules editor to make decisions about dates, but the
options available to me in the LHS of the editor don't seem to be rich
enough, I am assuming I can create a function to wrap some extra processing
logic which users can include in their rules? I can't find any good examples
of how to define/write such functions though.

Many thanks,

Dave

-- 

A. P. Herbert <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/a_p_herbert.html>
- "A high-brow is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of
Picasso."
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