Hi!

 

I am trying to leverage/integrate the XML knowledge bases and rules with more mainstream programming tools and environments, like Drools. And therefore it would be nice to know the state-of-the-art of XML rule language in Drools.

 

As far as I understand, that up to the version 5.3 Drools supported 2 external languages (XML and DRL) that were mapped to the internal language, then the support for XML was dropped. Here is nice discussion about possible XML rule language and Drools:

http://drools.46999.n3.nabble.com/Enhancements-to-Rule-XML-BRL-td1082068.html

 

I have several question regarding XML rule language:

 

1) what is the development status of it, specifically - does Drools really support standart RuleML? Here http://wiki.ruleml.org/index.php/RuleML_Implementations Drools is cited as the implementaton of RuleML but is is really so? At least Drools documentation does not say so. There is third-party translation tool available http://docs.codehaus.org/display/LOGICABYSS/RuleML2DroolsTranslator but is this sufficient for using RuleML with Drools?

 

2) Are there any suggestions or ideas for the implementation of RuleML translation to Drools internal language? Maybe it can be done in a straigtforward manner, but I feel that there should be some more formal solution. I.e. XML rule languages have formal syntax and apparently Drools internal language has formal syntax as well. If we could endow those languages with the formal semantics as well then the translation could be done in meta-level. I.e., maybe there are tools that can help to specify formal operational semantics for the formally given programming languages and then provide support for the translation in at this - more general level?

 

I would be glad to hear any suggestions or ideas about this.

 

Thanks!

Tom