2009/8/5 Mark Proctor
<mproctor@codehaus.org>
Ken Archer wrote:
The jboss.org documentation describes rule templates as "
an
experimental feature. In particular, the API is
subject to change". However, the Red Hat documentation does not
caveat rule templates as "experimental" in any way. Are templates
(which are available in other BRMSs) no longer considered
"experimental"? Thanks so much.
No they are experimental still. I'm waiting for the community author,
or someone else in the community to, to work on them and mature them
more. Adding other tabular data sources, such as a database and proving
the current approach is flexible enough. We haven't had any feedback on
this yet, I don't even know if people are using it, so it's hard for
us to guage the maturity of it.
First thing I missed in the pre-5.0 stage was a general interface for feeding the template expansion with arbitrary Bean-style objects or property maps; so this is now in there. I'm about to use this feature, to sell people here at this company the concept that rules, and Drools in particular, is well suited for a certain application area.
If interested users (yes, you, Ken) formulate and pronounce their requirements beyond making the IF stable, I'd be willing to look into it.
So until the community steps up more,
even if it's just suggestions on what's needed to get this matured, it
will stay "experimental" - some better documentation wouldn't go amiss
either :)
And if people (yes, you, Mark) would not only ominously hint at what needs to be added to Expert sections 5.1.7 and 5.2, then I'd also consider writing a few paragraphs.
Cheers
Wolfgang
Mark
Ken Archer
Telogical Systems