I don't use the JSR-94 API, but I'd go along with Ben regarding its value in getting the product into businesses. Pre-sales meetings tend to involve the sales guys asking what other products are being evaluated, and you can pretty much guarantee that the competition are going to point out that Drools isn't JSR-compliant. Despite the API being a minimal part of any rules app, that's the kind of thing that sounds bad to the management guys who are holding the purse strings. I'm most familiar with such product evaluations in the banking sector, and that's the kind of thing that would get the product kicked into touch very quickly. Although when I was doing such an evaluation a couple of years ago, I must admit that the price was the top reason Drools was dropped!

Not really wanting to raise the politics of it, but I'm more curious why JBoss / Red Hat don't seem to have any representation on the expert panel. The usual reasoning for not using JSR-94 seems to be that there's certain functionality that can be implemented more easily using the Drools API. Surely that's somewhat self-fulfilling, if there is no representation from the Drools team on the panel?

On 14 Feb 2013, at 12:24, Ben.Cotton@alumni.rutgers.edu <ben.cotton@morganstanley.com> wrote:

Even if you find evidence that nobody is using JSR-94, I still would not nuke it.

Technically, it is the Java standard API for inter-operating w/ Rules Engine providers. Every project under the JBoss brand seems to prioritize the merits of its platform stack being 100% open-source and 100% standards compliant. By nuking JSR-94 could DROOLs (technically? politically?) be seen as being delinquent (wrt to this JBoss community priority)? Also, by nuking JSR-94 -- even if no one is using it -- do you risk some other Java based rules engine provider using a FUD-like pitch of "Don't use DROOLs. They use their own proprietary Java API. Ours is JSR-94 compliant, DROOLs is not compliant ...." ?

JSR-94 seems like a relatively straightforward specification. Though it may be a nuisance to maintain the necessary API bridges to the DROOLs specific interfaces and implementation capabilities, it might also be worth it to ":just do it" ... if for no other reason than to pre-emptively disarm any potential "DROOLs is not standards compliant!" FUD rantings.

On 2/13/2013 5:59 PM, Mark Proctor wrote:
I've asked this on the developer list, thought I'd ask it here too.

Is anyone using JSR94, anyone think we should not nuke it?

Mark
_______________________________________________
rules-users mailing list
rules-users@lists.jboss.org
https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users
_______________________________________________
rules-users mailing list
rules-users@lists.jboss.org
https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users