[rules-users] Wading through the Drools knowledge waters

Greetings: I am a graduate student working on rules based systems in design. I had a very fundamental (theoretical) question on rules usage and would appreciate if you could be so kind as to help. Consider a hypothetical university application that has the following objects: GradStudent GradStudentRecord (which contains details such as GPA etc.) GIven the above(and based on the drools docs I have read so far) I can write a rule as: when GradStudent.Record.GPA > 3 then student.standing = good So far everything is okay. Now consider the case where the University decides to have PhD Students. Note that there are no PhDStudent objects in the application yet but I wish to have a rule such as: when PhDStudentRecord.GPA > 3.5 then student.standing = good Does the above scenario mean that I would have to code the application and add an extra PhDStudent object before I can write a rule ? In other words, is the following proposition true? Proposition: if there are N objects in an application, and I wish to use JBoss rules then the rule can be written only "in terms" of the N objects. If there is a rule to be written for a new (K+1)th object, I would have to first code that new object in the application and then write the rule. I would appreciate if anyone could validate my thoughts above. Sincerely, Anup GradStudent Michigan Tech.