[rules-users] Limiting rule evaluation--not firing

Hello; I am aware of the fundamental difference between inserting facts--and evaluating them against all the rules in the rule base--and firing rules--i.e., executing only certain rules' consequences. I understand that ruleflow-group and agenda-group and activation-group can all be employed to govern which rules' consequences are fired at fireAllRules() time. My question (which has been asked by many others in different ways, yet not answered as far as I can tell on the mailing list to anyone's satisfaction) is: is there any construct that can be used when it is known up front that only certain rules will match? That is, is there any way to limit rule evaluation? For example, I have a series of surveys that all use the same KnowledgeBase to govern the flow of the user through the survey. But once I've asked a given question, then I know right then and there which rules have a chance of taking effect. I've already put them in their own agenda-group, and I already switch focus to that agenda group prior to fact insertion, so that by the time I call fireAllRules() I've made it so that--say--ten rules' consequences are the only ones (out of hundreds) that could possibly fire in this given session. But unless I'm radically misunderstanding something, each time I insert a fact, it is evaluated against all the hundreds of rules, even when several hundred of those rules don't have any chance of having their consequences firing. I even understand (I think) why this is. If I were, for example, to subsequently pop the agenda group that I had set focus to, then "MAIN" would be selected, and for those activations to fire the inserted fact would have had to have been evaluated against all the rules, including those whose agenda group is "MAIN". But I guess what I'm wondering is: can I somehow turn this off? Can I, in other words, partition the KnowledgeBase itself? Can I effectively tell Drools, during this stateless session, don't even bother trying to match facts against rules 1-10, just try rules 11-14? Thanks, Laird -- View this message in context: http://drools-java-rules-engine.46999.n3.nabble.com/Limiting-rule-evaluat... Sent from the Drools - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.