I have a simple beginners question about using rules.

Say that I have a set of rules that are static and exist in drl files to deal with product pricing.  But then I also have a set of dynamic rules stored in the database for different promotions.  Depending on the promotion entered or selected, the dynamic rule is retrieved from the promotion db row.

Based on this criteria, I have some quick questions that I hope someone can help give me answers:

1) Is it good practice to be loading rules, add them to packages, compile, and create the RuleBase for every incoming request?  I take it that's not a very efficient way to load the rules. It's probably better to keep the compiled rule engine available and simply create the RuleBase for every incoming request instead.

2) Would it be better then to create two rules engine - 1 for the static drl files that do not change and one for the dynamic rules that gets refreshed and loaded every time?

3) Another alternative is to load ALL the promotions rules in the DB into one rule engine and make sure to check promotion codes on each run.  This seems to be efficient.  however, how would I know when the DB promotions have changed so that I can reload the rules?  I can think of a couple ways.  One is to do periodic cache flushing which will refresh the rules engine every once in a while.  The other way is to query modification dates and see if any promotions were modified since the last time the rules engine was loaded.  There could be a third way, which combines the previous two ways together.


I'd like to know if there is some best practice when it comes to dynamic rule reloading and what is an efficient and scalable way to do this.

Thanks for any thoughts or suggestions!

-Chris
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