Yes, if you have 229 rules like that, breaking them up is advised. :)

The thing is, when you insert objects into working memory, with rules like that you're most likely doing way more criteria matches than you need to.  And while I'm pretty sure drools does some rule optimization in the background (like breaking rules like one below into several subrules) it can only go so far. (And the devs will have to address exactly what drools is doing in that regard.)  Also, I'm pretty sure drools treats && and "," differently behind the scenes for separating rule conditions.  Any reason why your rule doesn't look like this:

$bookingRule : BTExecutionBookingRuleModel (

      priority == 1,

      // when a criterion is not set, it is considered as satisfied.

      (traderCriterion == null || $dealModel.trader == traderCriterion),

      (portfolioCriterion == null || $dealModel.portfolio == portfolioCriterion),

      // when a product type criterion is set to unknown, it is considered as satisfied whatever deal product type is.

      (productTypeStringCriterion == null || productTypeCriterion == ProductType.Unknown 

          || $dealModel.product.productType == productTypeCriterion),

      (listedIndexCriterion == null || $dealProductRelatedIndexes.relatedIndexes contains listedIndexCriterion)

    )


Search the drools-expert docs for "constraintGroup":

https://hudson.jboss.org/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/trunk/target/docs/drools-expert/html_single/index.html

I believe that behind the scenes, drools creates alpha nodes in the rete based on the constraint groups. So, as your big rules are structured now, you may be getting no benefit from drools' rete optimizations because you have one big group per BTExecutionBookingRuleModel constraint. (Specifically, you may be losing the alpha node sharing, which would cause a big performance hit.)

Some other optimization considerations:
1) do your == checks use identity whenever possible?  In the case of "productTypeCriterion == ProductType.Unknown" is ProductType.Unknown an enum. (Or, less desirable, an int constant)
2) When you use collections for contains checks, are the collections Sets? (or better yet, EnumSets)

From: Costigliola Joel (EXT) <joel.costigliola-ext@natixis.com>
To: Rules Users List <rules-users@lists.jboss.org>
Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 9:57:49 AM
Subject: [rules-users] Struggling to improve my rules performance !

Hello,

 

I would like to improve the performance of my Drools process, I have already done some enhancements like removing the use of “collect” and “eval”.

I must say I’m a Drools newbie struggling to determine what causes my performance problems.

 

Before asking, I need to explain in few words the problem I want to solve with Drools :

My company is a bank where traders are making deals on markets, these deals must be classified in book, this is what we call “booking process”.

Booking is done according to booking criteria : which trader has made the deal ? on which product ? etc …

A booking rule defines a set of criteria and the target book where the deal will classified.

I’m using Drools to :

  1. find all booking rules matching deals made by traders
  2. apply the right booking rule on the deal among the ones matching the deal (i.e. that is book the deal)

 

I’m testing the booking process with 1000 deals and 229 booking rule.

It takes 60 seconds for Drools to book the 1000 deals, which is too slow to be put in production.  

On the 60 seconds, I have 7 seconds for facts insertion and the remaining for process (after session.fireAllRules)

 

Do you think such numbers are normal/expected ?

 

Like I said I don’t really know where the performance bottlenecks are … I’m thinking of exploring the following possibilities :

  • splitting my rules into very simple rules
  • starting the booking process with fewer data and running it several times (instead of one booking process on 1000, run 10 booking processes on 100 deals each)

 

I have put my rules code below (for courageous people), if you see some obvious performance problems or if you can give some hint to explore, you would be very welcome.

 

Thanks in advance for your lights,

Regards,

 

Joël Costigliola

 

Ps : rules details

 

I have defined a flow composed of 3 steps/rules group, each group has one rule, here’s the flow and the rules.

 

Flow :

------

"Find matching booking rules" -> "Refresh" -> "Apply booking rule group"

 

Rules :

------

 

The job of this rule is to store in DealMatchingBookingRules all the booking rule matching a specific deal (each DealMatchingBookingRules instance has a unique Deal).

 

rule "Find matching level 1 booking rules by deal"

  salience 10

  no-loop

  ruleflow-group "Find level 1 matching booking rules by deal group"

 

  when

    $dealMatchingBookingRules : DealMatchingBookingRules($dealModel : deal, $dealProductRelatedIndexes : dealProductRelatedIndexes)

    $bookingRule : BTExecutionBookingRuleModel (

      priority == 1

      // when a criterion is not set, it is considered as satisfied.

      && (traderCriterion == null || $dealModel.trader == traderCriterion)

      && (portfolioCriterion == null || $dealModel.portfolio == portfolioCriterion)

      // when a product type criterion is set to unknown, it is considered as satisfied whatever deal product type is.

      && (productTypeStringCriterion == null || productTypeCriterion == ProductType.Unknown 

          || $dealModel.product.productType == productTypeCriterion) 

      && (listedIndexCriterion == null || $dealProductRelatedIndexes.relatedIndexes contains listedIndexCriterion)

    )

  then

      Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger("Matching booking rules LOGGER");

      log.info("Found a level 1 matching rule for deal : " + $dealModel + ", rule is " + $bookingRule);

    $dealMatchingBookingRules.addMatchingBookingRule($bookingRule);

end

 

// used to tell Drools that our $dealMatchingBookingRules are ready for next step in flow

rule "Refresh facts in level 1 booking rule process"

  salience 5

  no-loop

  ruleflow-group "Refresh facts in level 1 booking rule process group"

 

  when

    $dealMatchingBookingRules : DealMatchingBookingRules()

  then

    update($dealMatchingBookingRules);

end

 

rule "Apply level 1 booking rule"

  no-loop

  ruleflow-group "Apply level 1 booking rule group"

 

  when

    $dealMatchingBookingRules : DealMatchingBookingRules(hasSingleMatchingLevel1BookingRule == true)

  then

    BTExecutionBookingRuleModel effectiveBookingRuleModel = $dealMatchingBookingRules.getSingleMatchingLevel1BookingRule();

    effectiveBookingRuleModel.applyRuleOnDeal($dealMatchingBookingRules.getDeal());

    retract($dealMatchingBookingRules);

end

 

 

 
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