Re[rules-users] ading incoming connection in Action - Rule flow

[Kris Verlaenen]

> Actually i have an action, which is common to a couple of splits, so in my
> action i need to log(log4j - file appender) that from which split request 
> is
> coming from.
I would guess you would need to create two actions, one for each path, 
before the join.  Those actions would have similar actions, i.e. writing out 
something to a log, just a different message.

Just to give you an idea on how we are improving things to make stuff like 
this easier, let me tell you how you could improve this using the upcoming 
Drools 5 version:
 * You'll be able to add (hidden) actions on nodes, so your logging actions 
could be hidden from the high-level overview of the process and specified as 
an onEntry or onExit action of some of the other nodes (logging 
functionality should not make the overall process view more complex).
 * Instead of creating actions that contain low-level code for logging a 
message, you could create a higher-level (domain-specific) node for logging 
messages.  This is a domain-specific node where you can specify the icon and 
the relevant parameters (in this case a message and some logging level 
probably).  Your process would only contain the message that needs to be 
logged in a declarative and higher-level manner. And you would be able to 
even easily switch the underlying logging implementation.  It will also 
greatly simplify testing.

Kris