[rules-dev] Exception with Drools-XLS and Maven: "An error occured opening the workbook."

Hi all. I recently had the same exception as reported in <https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/GUVNOR-286> https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/GUVNOR-286, but didn’t find anything on the web. We currently have the same error with Maven and Drools 5.0.1, very strange: Testcode public static void main(String[] args) { final DecisionTableConfiguration dtableconfiguration = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newDecisionTableConfiguration(); dtableconfiguration.setInputType( DecisionTableInputType.XLS ); final KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newKnowledgeBuilder(); kbuilder.add( ResourceFactory.newClassPathResource("Sample.xls", Test.class ), ResourceType.DTABLE, dtableconfiguration ); final KnowledgeBase kbase = KnowledgeBaseFactory.newKnowledgeBase(); kbase.addKnowledgePackages( kbuilder.getKnowledgePackages() ); // typical decision tables are used statelessly StatefulKnowledgeSession ksession = kbase.newStatefulKnowledgeSession(); } Stacktrace: org.drools.template.parser.DecisionTableParseException: An error occured opening the workbook. It is possible that the encoding of the document did not match the encoding of the reader. at org.drools.decisiontable.parser.xls.ExcelParser.parseFile(ExcelParser.java :89) at org.drools.decisiontable.SpreadsheetCompiler.compile(SpreadsheetCompiler.j ava:90) at org.drools.decisiontable.SpreadsheetCompiler.compile(SpreadsheetCompiler.j ava:69) at org.drools.decisiontable.DecisionTableProviderImpl.compileStream(DecisionT ableProviderImpl.java:29) at org.drools.decisiontable.DecisionTableProviderImpl.loadFromInputStream(Dec isionTableProviderImpl.java:19) at org.drools.compiler.DecisionTableFactory.loadFromInputStream(DecisionTable Factory.java:16) at org.drools.compiler.PackageBuilder.addKnowledgeResource(PackageBuilder.jav a:508) at org.drools.builder.impl.KnowledgeBuilderImpl.add(KnowledgeBuilderImpl.java :31) at Test.main(Test.java:21) Caused by: jxl.read.biff.BiffException: Unable to recognize OLE stream at jxl.read.biff.CompoundFile.<init>(CompoundFile.java:111) at jxl.read.biff.File.<init>(File.java:113) at jxl.Workbook.getWorkbook(Workbook.java:250) at jxl.Workbook.getWorkbook(Workbook.java:235) at org.drools.decisiontable.parser.xls.ExcelParser.parseFile(ExcelParser.java :74) ... 8 more The strange thing: When we tried it with Eclipse (3.4.2) and created a Drools project, everything worked. When we created a maven project and added exactly the same libraries, the exception was caused. We tracked it down to the .project file: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <projectDescription> <name>iks_drools</name> <comment></comment> <projects> </projects> <buildSpec> <buildCommand> <name>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javabuilder</name> <arguments> </arguments> </buildCommand> <!-- buildCommand> <name>org.maven.ide.eclipse.maven2Builder</name> <arguments> </arguments> </buildCommand --> <buildCommand> <name>org.drools.eclipse.droolsbuilder</name> <arguments> </arguments> </buildCommand> </buildSpec> <natures> <nature>org.eclipse.jdt.core.javanature</nature> <!-- nature>org.maven.ide.eclipse.maven2Nature</nature --> </natures> </projectDescription> With the comments it works, without the comments and the maven2Builder and natures it causes the exception. We are puzzled. Any ideas? Hopefully it is OK to post that to the dev lists, seems a pretty deep thing… Thanks a lot and Cheers Bernd