Be happy to help, it just takes a bit to understand your coding environment and standards. My first goal is to point out the need for exposed Rule IDs and try to understand the system the way it sits.

As a side note, I found a feature to "export to a zip file" under the Admin->Manage Backups. It doesn't seem to work or maybe it just writes the file to some default location. I did search my hard drive for any new Zips so I guess it just doesn't work atm.

Thanks,

Michael Rhoden

From: rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org [mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org] On Behalf Of Mark Proctor
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 10:29 AM
To: Rules Users List
Subject: Re: [rules-users] JBRMS - Rule IDs/Referencing

The system is an "asset managemnt system", every item is an asset from the rule to the package configuration. You can reference any item using a unique name + package name + version, each item also has a UUID (provided by the JCR node). However we don't have any remoting/ws api access to this info - you would have to build ontop of the programmatic api provided in drools-repository. The versioning is multi dimensional too - i.e. a Package configuration is itself versioned against specific versions of rules, if you want to update the Package to a new version of a Rule, you must create a new version of the Package Configuration.

So it sounds like it doesn't do what you want now, but the foundations are there and you can get involved with us and help us change that.

Mark

Michael Rhoden wrote:

I have a question about rule storage and referencing with the JBRMS. Mostly this is directed to Michael Neale (since I believe this is his baby), but since I cant catch him on IRC I'll post it to here to see if others have this similar concern.

A little history before I get to the question. We have been using drools since 2.x (still on 2.x) and have developed much around the core engine. The way we currently store rules is in a database, at runtime we pull them out and write an xml file. What this allows is rule referencing back to the authoring source. We translate from DB->XML so the "then" returns the ID. We also use it to create unique names for rules. In our editor we have notes, versions and the complete rule code, similar to the new JBRMS. When a rule fires in our system the purpose may be to show an error or change a price. Either way sometimes people ask why did this fire, or further, they dispute the rule all together. So in each message or price change we track the ID of the rule being fired/applied.

From that we have developed 2 tools, one to lookup a rule and see a great deal of info about that rule (whats/whys), the other is an Override tool that allows you, given authority, to associate a rule ID to a transaction and have coded so when the engine fires this rule, it will be ignored by the system. Obviously how we override is not something I expect you to solve, but giving me the ability by having a unique ID would be.

I would think the desire to "Track" and "Override" a rule is pretty high for most people using a rule system in an enterprise. What makes this possible is exposing a unique identifier in the storage of rules (think database and editor) as well as the execution of rules (as they fire). I setup the MR2 of the JBRMS and tried to look at the storage system to see if a rule had some unique identifier that we could use, and found none. Seems like a rulebase is a blob, though maybe I'm just looking at it wrong.

So my question and/or request is there a way to have each rule have a unique identifier (by version is fine) in the JBRMS storage system. I think this is the first step, the second is harder but make the system associate the ID to a rule at execution ("then"). Similar to the option of expiring a rule at X date.

While this may not seem huge, and is definitely not as cool as changing semantics in MVEL, it is a huge barrier of adopting this new very feature rich JBRMS.

Thanks,

Michael Rhoden
  


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