[rules-users] Autoboxing

Hi everbody, I'm trying to translate an other rule-language in JBossRules (with XSL(T)). One of my major problems is the autoboxing- without unboxing-support in the engine. I think it is a general problem, because (1) everyone who is writing a rule has to know what types the properties in the objects (beans) to be used are. I think it is enough to know is it a digit, a boolean or... The trouble begins in an evaluation: when Person ($age1 : age, name == 'Mike') Person ($age2 : age, name == 'Peter') eval ($age1 > $age2) // !!! it's wrong eval ($age1.intValue() > $age2.intValue()) // it's ok if the Objects // are Integer and not // Double or ... .. I think a rule-creator without java-knowlege has only little understanding for this. (... and rules are for specialist from different domains???) (2) another conflict is in the different handling in fieldconstraints and evaluations. I can use all operators for simple types in field constraints but not in evaluations: when Person (age > 20) // here I use the field as a primintiv type Person (age < 30) .. I know that all of them based on java and oop and I need this knowledge for the RHS, but this confusion is not helpful for beginners or user from other domains. I don't know, what the reason for autoboxing (without unboxing especially in java 5) is. I'm confused by the documentation. (Drools Documentation: "... If you use Java 5, then you get the best of both worlds ..." (context autoboxing). Another line in the drool documentation: "All bound primitive declarations are boxed, there is currently no auto-unboxing (if you use java 5, this is all automatic).") Will the unboxing be supported in futur versions? (... or afford a possibility for switch off the autoboxing?) Thanks, -jens