[rules-users] Help understanding rule flow

[Kris Verlaenen]

Quoting dbrownell83 <dbrownell83 at hotmail.com>:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am just going through Conway's game of life to understand how this
> works.
> I am using the Eclipse plug-in to make life easier.
> I see you can either use the agenda-group style, or the rule-flow
> style.
> 
> Some points of confusion:
> 
> 1. In killAll.rf, there is "calculate before" and "calculate after",
> and
> they both use ruleFlowGroup="calculate"... 
> Are ruleFlowGroups set in the XML?  (ie. the UI doesn't allow you to
> edit
> this)

Do you have your Properties view open?  Window -> Show View -> Other ...
and select the Properties view under the General category.  The
properties view has a ruleflow-group property you can change.

> 2. In generation.rf, there is a splitter and joiner around 'kill'
> and
> 'birth'.  
> However, in the AgendaGroupDelegate.nextGeneration() code, the agenda
> groups
> are 'stacked', such that 'birth' rules will be executed before 'kill'
> rules.  
> Is there any real difference here?  
As you said, the agenda groups are stacked, meaning that if group1 calls
group2, you will go back to group1 after executing group2.  And
ruleflows will allow you to do much more advanced features as well, like
conditions, states, etc.

Kris

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