<div dir="ltr">Thanks for the explanation, I was a bit confused because of the terminology; "virtual" is not mentioned in the docs. ;)<div><br></div><div>Is there any plan for the public release of Trait property binding to a nested path? We would definitely need something like that in our environment. Or do you see any way we could hook into the property look-up mechanism? Based on what I know, I don't see any official extension point for that.</div>
<div><br></div><div>My only idea would be using some Java proxy voodoo-magic to wrap objects before they are inserted to the session, but my gut feeling is that it would be a way to debug hell... </div><div><br></div><div>
What do you think?</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Peter</div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2014-05-27 19:42 GMT+02:00 Davide Sottara <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dsotty@gmail.com" target="_blank">dsotty@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<div>Consider that a trait is an interface
applied to some class. In the context of the pair:<br>
A "hard" field is a property (get/set) exposed by the interface
AND the underlying class<br>
A "soft" (or "virtual") field is a property exposed by the
interface BUT NOT by the underlying class<br>
A "hidden" field is a field of the underlying class NOT exposed by
the interface<br>
<br>
Hard and Soft fields can be accessed using the interface, hidden
fields are accessible using the map-like<br>
construct fields[ "fieldName" ].<br>
<br>
This said,<br>
the mapping is by default done using the property name and (then)
the property type.<br>
However, this mapping can be decoupled using the annotation
@Alias() on either the class OR the trait.<br>
E.g.<br>
declare Core <br>
name : String @Alias( "any-Id-or-even-an-IRI-here" )<br>
end <br>
<br>
declare trait SomeTrait<br>
label : String @Alias( "..." ) // if two "aliases" match,
this will be considered a hard field<br>
end<br>
<br>
The "accessor", i.e. the ability to bind a trait property to a
(possibly deeply) nested path is what I'm working<br>
on these days, I have the same requirement from another urgent use
case<br>
<br>
For the time being, you can probably create a "shortcut" accessor
pair in your implementation class, <br>
to execute the complex expression, and @Alias it to the trait
field.<br>
<br>
Please let me know if you find any issue/bugs and any feature
request you may have!<br>
Best<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
Davide</font></span><div><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
On 05/27/2014 07:57 AM, Horváth Péter Gergely wrote:<br>
</div></div></div><div><div class="h5">
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Hi Davide,
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Drools trait functionality is one of the powerful concepts
which makes Drools a good candidate for the project. So keep
up the good work! :) However I'm not sure if its current level
of flexibility would be sufficient for our use case. I've
checked the documentation, but haven't really found the term
virtual field -- could you please elaborate on this?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Do you think we could somehow hook into the evaluation of
the aliases or the "fields" Map? Sometimes you would need
slightly more than merely aliasing fields to something else;
e.g. calculating values for the purpose of rule processing or
extracting a value from a more complex object tree etc. Citing
the example -- GoldenCustomer( fields[ "age" ] > 18 ) --
being able to get a reference to the target object and the
field map expression "age" would be quite close to what I
imagined. Our custom code could then perform the appropriate
translation and return the requested value, hiding the fact
whether "age" is an actual field in the Customer object
itself/retrieved from an encapsulated complex object e.g.
replacing expression
"customer.personalInformation.birthData.age"/calculated on the
flight. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What do you think?</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Cheers,</div>
<div>Peter</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">2014-05-26 17:58 GMT+02:00 Davide
Sottara <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dsotty@gmail.com" target="_blank">dsotty@gmail.com</a>></span>:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">We are
working on the trait framework for cases like this.
Essentially,<br>
it allows to use<br>
interfaces when writing rules AND to inject the interfaces
dynamically<br>
at runtime,<br>
at the instance level. It relies on transparent proxies
which wrap the<br>
data classes<br>
and implement the required interfaces. A simple field
aliasing mechanism<br>
is provided<br>
(work in progress). For more complex transformations,
"virtual" fields<br>
can be added.<br>
See section 7.7.8 of the manual for more details and let me
know if it<br>
can help<br>
with your use case.<br>
Best,<br>
Davide<br>
<div>
<div><br>
On 05/26/2014 09:55 AM, Wolfgang Laun wrote:<br>
> Even a relatively sophisticated transformation
would be easier to implement<br>
> and most certainly safer from changes in the
unstable Drools API than some<br>
> hook-and-intercept mechanism built into Drools.<br>
><br>
> Notice that violent structural departure of the
model the BUs see from what<br>
> you call "persistence model" might make it
impossible for the BUs to come<br>
> up with rules that can be transformed to match the
other model at all;<br>
> if it is possible, rules might still incur a heavy
performance penalty.<br>
><br>
> It is (IMHO) a myth that "Rules" is a foolproof way
of establishing<br>
> business logic<br>
> independent from the data model and application
environment with which<br>
> this logic should be able to cooperate. As long as
everything is kept in the<br>
> abstract (i.e., formulated in terms of mathematics)
it will look good, but<br>
> any implementation may throw a spanner in the
works, or worse.<br>
><br>
> -W<br>
><br>
> On 26/05/2014, Péter Gergely, Horváth <<a href="mailto:h.peter@mailbox.hu" target="_blank">h.peter@mailbox.hu</a>>
wrote:<br>
>> Hi Wolfgang,<br>
>><br>
>> Thank you for your input. You are right that
some of the cases could simply<br>
>> be covered by regexp-replace, but I'm afraid,
not all of them. Interfaces<br>
>> could also help, but we have a requirement that
the business rules should<br>
>> not be tightly coupled to the underlying
persistence model. (I understand<br>
>> that some might say this is not ideal, but that
is our current situation)<br>
>><br>
>> I am wondering whether it is possible to hook
into Drools engine and<br>
>> intercept field value reference expression
evaluations in run time (e.g if<br>
>> "foo.bars" is used in an expression, we could
return "foo.barList") ? By<br>
>> injecting some custom code, we could make the
necessary decisions and<br>
>> extract the proper value from an object.
Unfortunately these parts of<br>
>> Drools are pretty much undocumented.<br>
>><br>
>> Regards,<br>
>> Peter<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> 2014-05-26 13:57 GMT+02:00 Wolfgang Laun <<a href="mailto:wolfgang.laun@gmail.com" target="_blank">wolfgang.laun@gmail.com</a>>:<br>
>><br>
>>> What you describe can be done with
/bin/sed.<br>
>>><br>
>>> Notice that the DSL processor doesn't
require you to translate entire<br>
>>> patterns; there is a mechanism for
translating "keywords", which is<br>
>>> just arbitrary tokens to whatever
replacement text.<br>
>>><br>
>>> If a "bar" must be translated to a
"barList" in the context of a class<br>
>>> "Foo" but not in any other context, a more
sophisticated translation<br>
>>> is required in any case (with /bin/sed
still being sufficient if<br>
>>> patterns aren't split across lines).<br>
>>><br>
>>> Some say that good design makes use of
Interfaces, which leaves room<br>
>>> for actual implementations being changed as
long as the interfaces are<br>
>>> implemented. Here, note that rules can be
written against interface<br>
>>> types.<br>
>>><br>
>>> -W<br>
>>><br>
>>><br>
>>> On 26/05/2014, Péter Gergely, Horváth <<a href="mailto:h.peter@mailbox.hu" target="_blank">h.peter@mailbox.hu</a>>
wrote:<br>
>>>> Hi All,<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> We are evaluating Drools 6 for our use
case, and face challenges where<br>
>>>> we<br>
>>>> would need some ideas from more
experienced users of Drools.<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> We have an application with a massive
code base and a large number of<br>
>>> model<br>
>>>> (entity) classes. We are in the process
of moving away from inherited<br>
>>>> legacy technologies and refactoring the
old code base. As a part of<br>
>>>> this<br>
>>>> work we would like extract some of the
hard-coded business logic to<br>
>>>> external rules, that is why we are
looking at Drools as a potential<br>
>>>> solution.<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> What we would like to have is some kind
of abstraction or mapping<br>
>>>> between<br>
>>>> actual entities and rules the business
users can define so that they do<br>
>>> not<br>
>>>> have to know the _exact_ details of the
data model (field names,<br>
>>>> precise<br>
>>>> relations etc). This would be important
for us so that we can refactor<br>
>>> the<br>
>>>> old model classes without affecting
business rules; also it would make<br>
>>> life<br>
>>>> easier for the business users. While
IDE support might make refactoring<br>
>>>> easier, we definitely want to have a
separation between rules and<br>
>>> entities.<br>
>>>> Given our situation, writing and
maintaining "stable" wrapper/adapter<br>
>>>> classes for the sole purpose of rule
processing is out of question. I<br>
>>> have<br>
>>>> checked the documentation of Drools DSL
support and for me it seems to<br>
>>>> be<br>
>>>> overkill for our use case: we do not
really need a custom language, but<br>
>>>> simply an abstraction between rules and
the data model classes.<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> What I could imagine is a piece of
code, (a custom property resolver? -<br>
>>> no<br>
>>>> sure how it is called) which maps
property expressions to actual<br>
>>> properties<br>
>>>> based on a custom annotation on the
entity class or something like<br>
>>>> that,<br>
>>> so<br>
>>>> that a rule containing "Foo.bars"
expression does not have to change<br>
>>>> even<br>
>>>> if we decide to rename "Foo.bars" to
"Foo.barList" in the model<br>
>>>> classes.<br>
>>>> (This was just a simple example of a
potential use cases)<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> Could you please share your thoughts on
this topic and point me into<br>
>>>> the<br>
>>>> right direction?<br>
>>>><br>
>>>> Thanks,<br>
>>>> Peter<br>
>>>><br>
>>>
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>>><br>
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