Looking at the 5.1 snapshots, these sections have not been updated since the 5.0 release. I'm looking at a 5.1 snapshot I downloaded on 11/2/09.

The relevent sections, specifically 5.1.7 and 5.2, seem to have errors and/or omissions and those sections should have the information I'm looking for. Unfortunately I don't know what the correct info should be, so I can't submit an edit myself.

As an example, from the last part of 5.1.7:
<snip>

The code to run this is simple:

KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newKnowledgeBuilder();
DecisionTableConfiguration dtconf = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newDecisionTableConfiguration();
dtconf.setInputType( DecisionTableInputType.XLS );

dtconf.setWorksheetName( "Tables_2" );
kbuilder.add( ResourceFactory.newInputStreamResource( getSpreadsheetStream() ),
              ResourceType.DTABLE,
              dtconf );

Collection<KnowlegePackage> kpkg = kbuilder.getKnowlegePackages();

We create an ExternalSpreadsheetCompiler object and use it to merge the spreadsheet with the rules. The two integer parameters indicate the column and row where the data actually starts - in our case column 2, row 2 (i.e. B2)

</snip>

The docs discuss creating an ExternalSpreadsheetCompiler in the example to merge the spreadsheet with the rules template, but the example is for a standard DecisionTable, without a custom template.

In section 5.2, it goes over templates, but does not discussion optional values or array values.

I have reviewed the Drools-Example files. There is an example in there of using array values, but not an example using optional values, which is what I particularly need.



On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Wolfgang Laun <wolfgang.laun@gmail.com> wrote:
An extensive rewrite of the section dealing with Templates was done in
the early stages of 5.0, and it ought to be available with current
snapshot releases. The relevant section is 5.2, Templates.

-W






On 11/24/09, Adam Rinehart <adam.rinehart@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to research using a rule template driven by data from a
> spreadsheet, rather than using a straight decision table.
>
> I understand I need to use the ExternalSpreadsheetCompiler but am finding a
> distressing lack of information about the template format.
>
> The 5.0 docs seem to have mistakes; the code example for that section looks
> to have been cut & pasted from another section and does not match the text
> description of what is going on.
>
> Using google, the best I could find was a blog posting from Steven Williams
> on Aug 26, 2008: http://blog.athico.com/2008/08/drools-rule-templates.html
>
> In this blog posting, he said it was the first of 3 examples from the
> drools-examples project. But I could not find any additional blog postings
> by him on this subject.
>
> Does anyone know of additional documentation or examples on how rule
> templates work?
>
> Specifically, how to do optional columns, and array columns, similar to how
> the built in decision tables feature works?
>
> Adam
>
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