Introducing

by Mario Fusco Red Hat Senior Software Engineer [email protected] twitter: @mariofusco

Drools Vision
Drools was born as a rule engine, but following the vision of becoming a single platform for business modelling, it realized it could achieve this goal only by leveraging 3 complementary business modelling techniques: Business Rule Management (Drools Expert) Business Process Management (Drools Flow) Complex Event Processing (Drools Fusion)

Drools 5 Business Logic Integration Platform

Drools Expert

Drools Flow

Drools Fusion

Drools Drools Guvnor Planner

Business Logic integration System

What a rule-based program is

A rule-based program is made up of discrete rules, each of which applies to some subset of the problem It is simpler, because you can concentrate on the rules for one situation at a time It can be more flexible in the face of fragmentary or poorly conditioned inputs Used for problems involving control, diagnosis, prediction, classification, pattern recognition in short, all problems without clear algorithmic solutions

Declarative

Vs. (What to do) (How to do it)

Imperative

When should you use a Rule Engine?

The problem is beyond any obvious algorithmic solution or it isn't fully understood The logic changes often Domain experts (or business analysts) are readily available, but are nontechnical You want to isolate the key parts of your business logic, especially the really messy parts

How a rule-based system works

Rule's anatomy
Quotes on Rule names are optional if the rule name has no spaces.

rule <name> <attribute> <value> when Pattern-matching salience <int> against objects in the agenda-group <string> <LHS> Working Memory no-loop <boolean> auto-focus <boolean> then duration <long> .... <RHS> end
Code executed when a match is found

Imperative vs Declarative
A method must be called directly Specific passing of arguments

public void helloMark(Person person) { if ( person.getName().equals( mark ) { System.out.println( Hello Mark ); } }

Rules can never be called directly Specific instances cannot be passed but are automatically selected with pattern-matching

rule Hello Mark when Person( name == mark ) then System.out.println( Hello Mark ); end

What is a pattern

Person( name == mark )

Field Name Object Type Restriction Field Constraint Pattern

Rule's definition
// Java public class Applicant { private String name; private int age; private boolean valid; // getter and setter here } // DRL declare Applicant name : String age : int valid : boolean end

rule "Is of valid age" when $a : Applicant( age >= 18 ) then modify( $a ) { valid = true }; end

Building
KnowledgeBuilder kbuilder = KnowledgeBuilderFactory.newKnowledgeBuilder(); kbuilder.add( ResourceFactory.newClassPathResource("Rules.drl"), ResourceType.DRL); KnowledgeBuilderErrors errors = kbuilder.getErrors(); if (kbuilder.hasErrors()) { System.err.println(kbuilder.getErrors().toString()); } KnowledgeBase kbase = KnowledgeBaseFactory.newKnowledgeBase(); kbase.addKnowledgePackages(kbuilder.getKnowledgePackages());

Executing
StatelessKnowledgeSession ksession = kbase.newStatelessKnowledgeSession(); Applicant applicant = new Applicant( "Mr John Smith", 21 ); assertFalse( applicant.isValid() ); ksession.execute( applicant ); assertTrue( applicant.isValid() );

More Pattern Examples

Person( $age : age ) Person( age == ( $age + 1 ) ) Person(age > 30 && < 40 || hair in (black, brown) ) Person(pets contain $rover ) Person(pets[rover].type == dog)

Conditional Elements
not Bus( color = red ) exists Bus( color = red ) forall ( $bus : Bus( color == red ) ) $owner : Person( name == mark ) Pet( name == rover ) from $owner.pets $zipCode : ZipCode()
Hibernate session

Person( ) from $hbn.getNamedQuery(Find People) .setParameters( [ zipCode : $zipCode ] )

'from' can work on any expression

.list()

Timers & Calendars

rule R1 When the light is on, and has been timer 1m30s on for 1m30s then turn it off when $l : Light( status == on ) then modify( $l ) { status = off }; rule R3 Execute now and after calendars "weekday" 1 hour duration only during weekday timer (int:0 1h) when rule R2 Alarm() timer ( cron: 0 0/15 * * * * ) then when sendEmail( Alert! ) Alarm() then Send alert every quarter of an hour sendEmail( Alert! )

Truth Maintenance System (1)

rule "Issue Adult Bus Pass" when $p : Person( age >= 18 ) then insert(new AdultBusPass( $p ) ); end rule "Issue Child Bus Pass" when $p : Person( age < 18 ) then insert(new ChildBusPass( $p ) ); end
Coupled logic

What happens when the child becomes adult?

Truth Maintenance System (2)

De-couples the logic rule "Who Is Child" when $p : Person( age < 18 ) then logicalInsert( new IsChild( $p ) ) end

rule "Issue Child Bus Pass" when $p : Person( ) IsChild( person =$p ) then logicalInsert(new ChildBusPass( $p ) ); end

Encapsulate knowledge providing semantic abstractions for this encapsulation

Maintains the truth by automatically retracting

Drools Eclipse DEMO

Complex Event Processing

Event
A record of state change in the application domain at a particular point in time

Complex Event
An abstraction of other events called its members

Complex Event Processing

Processing multiple events with the goal of identifying the meaningful events within the event cloud

Drools Fusion
Drools modules for Complex Event Processing Understand and handle events as a first class platform citizen (actually special type of Fact) Select a set of interesting events in a cloud or stream of events Detect the relevant relationship (patterns) among these events Take appropriate actions based on the patterns detected

Events as Facts in Time

Temporal relationships between events
rule "Sound the alarm" when $f : FireDetected( ) not( SprinklerActivated( this after[0s,10s] $f ) ) then // sound the alarm end

Workflows as Business Processes

A workflow is a process that describes the order in which a series of steps need to be executed, using a flow chart.

Drools Flow (aka jBPM5)

Allows to model business processes Eclipse-based editor to support workflows graphical creation Pluggable persistence and transaction based on JPA / JTA Based on BPMN 2.0 specification Can be used with Drools to model your business logic as combination of processes, events and rules

Drools Guvnor
Centralised repository for Drools Knowledge Bases Web based GUIs ACL for rules and other artifacts Version management Integrated testing

Drools Planner
Works on all kinds of planning problems
NP-complete Hard & soft constraints Huge search space

Planning constraints can be weighted and are written as declarative score rules The planner algorithm is configurable. It searches through the solutions within a given amount of time and returns the best solution found

Q
Mario Fusco Red Hat Senior Software Engineer

A
[email protected] twitter: @mariofusco