This might be of interest:<div><br></div><div><a href="http://blog.athico.com/2009/06/introducing-new-smart-forms-tool-drools.html">http://blog.athico.com/2009/06/introducing-new-smart-forms-tool-drools.html</a></div><div>
<br></div><div>Currently in the process of being released into open source and an announcement should be made in a few weeks.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:49 AM, tim fulcher <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:against.entropy@googlemail.com">against.entropy@googlemail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">Hi<br>
<br>
Making no bones about it, this is a broad topic request and I've got<br>
little hands-on Drools experience, just looking for some pointers on a<br>
potential Drools approach, feedback appreciated.<br>
<br>
Background:<br>
We have a system which asks online users questions to diagnose an<br>
issue (the problem domain isn't important right now).<br>
The questions are structured in a tree/graph such that one question<br>
leads to another until a conclusion - not exactly rocketscience to<br>
this list I suspect! Any question will have n outputs (defined in<br>
configuration); each output is mapped to an option in an HTML<br>
select/radio button.<br>
<br>
The key issue though is that this question flow is all running in the<br>
browser, by reading in an XML configuration and parsing this in<br>
javascript. Instead I need this executing server side, i.e. in a rule<br>
engine. One reason is that increasingly questions are being automated<br>
- currently we make an ajax call which decides upon the outcome to<br>
select and therefore move onto the next. This is however a little<br>
clunky at present.<br>
<br>
I see Drools as a potential execution engine for our reworked system,<br>
running rules until needing a manual question to be asked, and<br>
triggering question display in a page. Upon the answer the flow<br>
continues in that fashion until a conclusion is reached.<br>
<br>
Specific queries:<br>
<br>
We have a legacy stack of question flows, how to adapt them into a<br>
syntax amenable to Drools? Can I do this at runtime?<br>
( Our question graphs could be accessed via database access or in an<br>
XML format )<br>
<br>
Given many questions have >2 outcomes, I assume each question-answer<br>
permutation would be a rule?<br>
<br>
Does every question have to be mapped to a bean to become a fact to<br>
operate on? Given our questions are of a few broad types<br>
(boolean,numeric,select one) is that all I need to model?<br>
<br>
In our current setup a user could decide to re-answer an earlier<br>
question and therefore take an alternate route. What would be the<br>
equivalent in Drools?<br>
<br>
If this is viable, will I need 1 rule outcome to pose a question and<br>
another to operate on the outcome, i.e. will the rules fire up<br>
to/including the decision to ask a question, then when an answer fact<br>
is injected into working memory the rules will fire from that point<br>
onwards?<br>
<br>
<br>
Thanks<br>
<br>
A:E<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>