I fully agree with Jim K. Writing good business rules (and in my opinion good business rules are loosely coupled) is not straightforward and intuitive at the beginning and requires from software engineers to develop a different mindset. Having an ELSE statement could be a deterrent from writing loosely coupled rules which is a good practice IMHO. It reminds me of my early BASIC programming days (in the 80's :) where I would end up with horrible spaghetti code because of my misuse of the infamous GOTO statement. I also vote against the ELSE statement. Spyros -----Original Message----- From: rules-users-bounces(a)lists.jboss.org [mailto:rules-users-bounces@lists.jboss.org] On Behalf Of JimK Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 9:08 PM To: rules-users(a)lists.jboss.org Subject: Re: [rules-users] 'else' in rule My $.02 I'm early in my use of Drools and Rules and struggled at first with the lack of ELSE. At first I would frequently feel "an ELSE would be prefect here". After awhile I believe that NOT having Else is a good thing. As I get better with writing rules I find that most of the times when I think I need an Else it usually means I should take a closer look at the rule. If I have a true Else situation for me I put the two rules one right after another. In these situations I think it is better to have to write the "ELSE" rule as effectively a NOT of the WHEN rule then having an ELSE fall through. Isn't that much extra coding and usually gives me pause to give it one more evaluation to see if this is a true ELSE or a new rule with similar criteria from the When. Many times the ELSE covers too many possibilities that should be explicitly checked and for me at least tells me I might not have fully broken the requirements down. As another posting indicates the complexity of implementing it I also wonder about the performance hit the logic to allow for an ELSE would add. With my current understanding of business rules and drools I would vote against an ELSE. Jim K. -- View this message in context: http://drools.46999.n3.nabble.com/else-in-rule-tp3264337p3565278.html Sent from the Drools: User forum mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ rules-users mailing list rules-users(a)lists.jboss.org https://lists.jboss.org/mailman/listinfo/rules-users