[rules-users] architectural question: accessing large dataset from rdbms?

Hi, As a drools newbie, I'm grappling with the above question; any help much appreciated. To elaborate: - We have a largish dataset (~50GB+) stored in an rdbms (oracle). - we're considering using drools to implement business rules (e.g. for data validation constraints and derivations). - the issue is how to give the rulebase efficient & scalable access to the db. It would potentially need to access the whole dataset, since business rules can potentially affect all tables. We've done an artificial pilot with a much smaller dataset, simply by syncing the entire db into the rulebase. Users like it because they can read the rules directly (using a DSL). Before we go any further however we need to find a scaling strategy before we go any further. We were thinking about some kind of caching strategy: conceptually the rulebase would have a cache hit failure causing data to be loaded from the db. However we've no idea if that's a practical option, or if there's something better. Hope that makes sense; any help much appreciated. Oh, and btw, thanks for a great piece of software! - Scoot.