Re: [rules-dev] RE: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule Flows from 4.0.7 to 5.0.0

Friday, 31 October 2008

Nimesh Muley wrote:
...

 Hi,

 Yes the patch detects which version and upgrades on the fly 
 (Abrakadabra magic ;-)).
 oh right, cool I'll check this out. I've been on conference for the last 
3 weeks, so I've got behind on looking at JIRAs, so if it's magic then I 
should be able to just include it.
...

 There is a system parameter ("drools.ruleflow.port"). The code checks 
 for version only when the system parameter is set to true. This was 
 added so that there is no overhead (CPU time) for users who are using 
 rule flows in 5.0 only. Users using the old rule flows in 5.0 and want 
 upgrade must set this parameter to "true".

 Main file to be checked for changes is 
 src/main/java/org/drools/compiler/ProcessBuilder.java. The other files 
 are related to cleanup (format as well as code) or test cases.

 Modifying ProcessBuilder was easier / cleaner to control the upgrade 
 of rule flows instead of ProcessReader. If you feel otherwise then let 
 me know and I will modify it.

 If you feel more test cases should be added to make this more sturdy 
 then let me know which ones and I can submit the same too.
 Don't know how many test cases you have, but more is always good, 
especially on something with so many different possabilities. Especially 
for handling bad XML gracefully.
...

 Thanks.

 Regards,

 - Nimesh

 *From:* rules-dev-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org 
 [mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org] *On Behalf Of *Mark Proctor
 *Sent:* Thursday, October 30, 2008 7:47 PM
 *To:* Rules Dev List
 *Subject:* Re: [rules-dev] RE: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule 
 Flows from 4.0.7 to 5.0.0

 Nimesh Muley wrote:

 Oh ok. I developed it because you mentioned whether it would be 
 possible to plug it in package reader.

 I think we can close this JIRA as invalid.

 The code handles the migration right, does it already hook into the 
 package reader? I wasn't sure, as i haven't read the code yet. Are you 
 saying the patch will detect which version of the XML it is, and 
 upgrade on the fly?

 My assumption was that it was just some code to migrate from 4 to 5, 
 but someone still needs to execute that, so it seemed the easiest 
 route was to do this via an eclipse option for now - as hooking into 
 packagebuilder with auto detection was more work and needed more 
 testing, but if you have done this already....

 In case there is a change of mind later on we already have a patch for 
 it ;-).

 see above.

 Thanks.

 Regards,

 - Nimesh

 *From:* rules-dev-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org 
 <mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org> 
 [mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org] *On Behalf Of *Mark Proctor
 *Sent:* Thursday, October 30, 2008 5:10 PM
 *To:* Rules Dev List
 *Subject:* Re: [rules-dev] RE: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule 
 Flows from 4.0.7 to 5.0.0

 Nimesh Muley wrote:

 Hi,

 I have raised a feature request for this 
 https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBRULES-1797 and also submitted a 
 patch (JBRULES-1797.patch.zip) for the same. If there are any changes 
 in the patch kindly let me know.

 I believe kris is going to add a feature to eclipse where you can 
 select a ruleflow for it to convert, don't think we are going to go 
 for auto-detection and conversion on the fly with the packagebuilder.

 Mark

 Thanks.

 Regards,

 - Nimesh

 *From:* rules-dev-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org 
 <mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org> 
 [mailto:rules-dev-bounces@lists.jboss.org] *On Behalf Of *Nimesh Muley
 *Sent:* Monday, October 06, 2008 10:08 AM
 *To:* &#39;rules-dev(a)lists.jboss.org <mailto:rules-dev@lists.jboss.org>'
 *Subject:* [rules-dev] RE: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule Flows 
 from 4.0.7 to 5.0.0

 Hi,

 By going through the code it seems possible to achieve this by 
 modifying ProcessBuilder.addProcessFromFile. Easiest check would be to 
 see whether the XML contains element called as "process". Since XML 
 Parsing is internal to the individual releases (4.0 uses XStream and 
 5.0 uses XMLReader), I am not sure whether we should form a XML 
 document from the reader to check if the process belongs to version 
 4.0 or compliant.

 Brute force check would be indexOf ("<process") >= 0 then it is 5.0 
 else 4.0 ;-). I am sure there would be better ways than this kind of 
 check.

 I do not mind taking this further. Due to lack of in depth knowledge 
 about drools, I am not able to decide what the approach should be for 
 checking the version.

 This would be a really good feature as it would mean that drools 5.0 
 is backward compliant for rule flows J. And this adds lot of 
 confidence to enterprises.

 p.s. Since this was now moving towards dev, I have moved the thread to 
 the dev mailing list.

 Thanks.

 Regards,

 - Nimesh

 *From:* rules-users-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org 
 <mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org> 
 [mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org] *On Behalf Of *Mark Proctor
 *Sent:* Saturday, October 04, 2008 9:37 PM
 *To:* Rules Users List
 *Subject:* Re: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule Flows from 4.0.7 to 
 5.0.0

 You are a star, that saves us a lot of work :) I'm wondering if we can 
 work this into the package reader and some how have it detect whether 
 something is version 4 or 5 and convert first if it's 4, fancy having 
 a look and seeing if that's possible?

 Mark

 Nimesh Muley wrote:

 Hi,

 I have attached a file for translating rule flows from 4.0 to 5.0. I 
 have tested my flows with the XSL and it works fine. However, the XSLT 
 may not be quite slick or compact as I have touched upon XSLT after a 
 long time. I have covered all the nodes available (ruleSet, start, 
 end, join, split, milestone, action and subProcess).

 There is one issue in the XSLT. I have not added the xmlns attribute 
 to the process element. Reason is that this attribute appears in child 
 nodes too with empty string, even though it is not mentioned for the 
 child nodes. This attribute is needed in the 'process' node because 
 the Eclipse editor for 5.0 ignores the process node if there are more 
 than 2 sub processes in that ruleflow. Am not sure why this is 
 happening but that has been my observation.

 In case XSLT is not present as an attachment then let me know the 
 location where it can be uploaded.

 Thanks.

 Regards,

 - Nimesh

 *From:* rules-users-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org 
 <mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org> 
 [mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org] *On Behalf Of *Mark Proctor
 *Sent:* Tuesday, September 30, 2008 7:26 PM
 *To:* Rules Users List
 *Subject:* Re: [rules-users] Compatibility of Rule Flows from 4.0.7 to 
 5.0.0

 No they are not compatible, 5.0 has a new ePDL XML language that is 
 human writable. I suggest that somone in the community starts looking 
 into an XSLT to translate them.

 Mark
 Vikrant Yagnick wrote:

 Hi All,

 I wanted to know if RuleFlows made using the Eclipse 4.0.7 RuleFlow 
 Builder will work with 5.0.0.  When, I try to upload a 4.0.7 ruleflow 
 into Guvnor, I get a NullPointerException and before that the following:

 Cannot find the declaration of element 
 'org.drools.ruleflow.core.impl.RuleFlowProcessImpl'.

 I checked the 5.0.0M1 jars for drools-core, and this class seems to 
 have been removed from there. Also, after installing the 5.0.0 plug-in 
 into Eclipse, my rule-flow nodes have all gone.

 Also, this may be a minor bug but it says(both in the docs and the 
 BRMS Guvnor M1 Release):

 "/Ruleflows allow flow control between rules. The eclipse plugin 
 provides a graphical editor. Upload /*/_ruleflow .rf_/*/ files for 
 inclusion in this package./":

 Should the .rf say .rfm ?

 Cheers,

 Vikrant