[rules-users] Searching a list - Is Drools the answer?

[Wolfgang Laun]

It's possible that putting the "constants" into rules will result in a rule
building process that's more complex than what you need to do if this data
is in facts. Notice that your Object_1 has to participate in (at least)
three different matching scenarios, which is a simple thing for a fact, but
may need three rules if FirstName and LastName are literals in rules.

A (serially) reusable Stateful Session would need to be set up with the 10k
facts. A search request enters an object, produces results, and retracts the
request; then the session is ready for the next request. (The N threads you
are talking about results from some overall application context?)

Regards
Wolfgang

2011/4/18 Drools User <drools2030 at gmail.com>

> I have been using Drools for several years, but just with constraints
> (rules) on 1 set of objects at a time. Think many rules, few facts in a
> stateless session. I have been given a new project at the office which
> requires having about 10-100k facts and few rules. These 10k facts would be
> basically constants, a list of things I need to search on each request. I
> would then need to load a single object, based on a request to see if my
> request object matched the list. It is somewhat a simple search, but I need
> to be able to inject aliases and search partial matches in addition to exact
> matches. A generic example:
>
> List:
> Object 1 (FirstName=John, LastName=Smith)
> Object 2 (FirstName=Will, LastName=Smith)
> Object 3 (FirstName=Jon, LastName=Smith)
>
> Request/Use Case:
> LastName=Smith, would return all 3 objects, but marked as single match
> LastName=Smith, Firstname =John, Would return object 1, as exact double
> match, and Object 3 a nickname double match
> LastName=Smith, Firstname =J, Would return object 1 and 3, as partial match
>
> In the second request, I need to run all names through a nickname DB/list
> to explode the name into multiple search patterns. Possibly using (
> http://code.google.com/p/nickname-and-diminutive-names-lookup/)
>
> Hopefully that explains a bit about the problem.
>
> So to the question, there are a few ways to solve this. The simplest is
> just SQL from a DB, but this proves to be slow to search all the ways I
> need. I need sub second response times. An in memory DB is another possible
> solution we are looking at. Not to think of Drools as the golden hammer, but
> this smells like something I can use Drools for. My first thought was to
> load the "List" as facts into a stateful session. My concern is wouldn't I
> need N copies of the list loaded to have N threads? This would be
> inefficient if so. I know rules aren't copied per working memory, but is
> there a way to create a master working memory for facts to use?
>
> So my second thought is to convert my List into rules so they would only be
> stored once in the system, regardless of number of threads using the engine.
>
> What do you guys think, am I on the right track with this? Is Drools a good
> way to do this or is there something better I have overlooked?
>
> Thank you for taking the time.
> -Drools user
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