Rule Project "ExternalRulesFromGUI"

Step 1. Defining GUI
Step 2. Defining Implementation Approach

Step 3. Setting Up Rule Templates

Step 4. Supporting Java Classes

Step 5. Creating Graphical Form Layouts in Excel
Step 6. Deploying and Executing the Web Application

Step 1. Defining Graphical User Interface

This project intends to create a web application that will consist of two parts:

1) Data input and Rule Engine Execution

2) Online Rules Editing

The view "Generate Customer Greeting" will allow to enter basic information about a customer and generate a greeting like "Good Morning, Mrs. Robinson!" based on the current time. Here is an example of the proper view:

By clicking on the button "Generate Greeting" a user could produce a new greeting in accordance with the latest greeting and salutation rules. By clicking on the buttons "Greeting Rules" a user will be taken to a web-based rule editor to modify the Greeting Rules:

By clicking on the buttons "Salutation Rules" a user will be taken to a web-based rule editor to modify the Salutation Rules:

This editors shows not how to make changes in the rule attributes but also allows a user to add rules by clicking on "the hyperlink "Add Rule" or to delete rules by clicking on the red cross.

Step 2. Defining Implementation Approach       ►top

We will build this web application using OpenRules Forms by defining 3 Excel-based layouts for every of the above views and using navigation logic described as processing flow rules. We will deploy our application on the Tomcat server. As usual, we will create the following files:

What makes this application special is a need to reinitialize the rule engine that generates a greeting every time when the greetings and/or salutations have been modified. However, we do not have to reinitialize a rule engine associated with an already opened OpenRulesSession with all layouts and related rule tables. So, we have to carefully distributes greeting generation information and GUI information between two different rule engines making sure that re-initialization of the first engine dome really quickly.

When we start the application for the first time, we want to display the default rules (defined in an Excel file) and we also want to use the default data about a customer (defined in another Excel file).

In this implementation, we will define a special Java class HelloManager whose responsibilities will include these and other data management tasks. The manager will support two rule engines:

1. A rule engine that reads the default greeting and salutation rules from the file war/rules/main/HelloDefaultRules.xls. Only this engine will deal with greeting rules and rule templates presented in the file war/rules/logic/HelloTemplates.xls.
    
2. A rule engine associated with the OpenRulesSession that will handle all GUI problems and will also read the default data about a customer from the Excel file HelloData.xls.

Thus, the entry point to our web application "index.jsp" will look as follows:

The first rule engine will be created by the constructor HelloManager(xlsMainRules), and the second rule engine automatically created by the OpenRulesSession will be set for the HelloManager by the statement:

man.setFormsEngine(openrules_session.getOpenRulesEngine());

The Environment table for the first rule engine is located in the file HelloDefaultRules.xls:

The Environment table for the second rule engine is located in the file HelloExternaRulesFromGUI.xls:

The main execution loop is implemented by the following method:

Step 3. Setting Up Rule Templates       ►top

The business logic for producing greetings and salutations is presented in the Excel file HelloTemplates.xls. The first template

specifies how to define different greetings (Good Morning, Good Afternoon, etc.) based on the hour of the day. If the parameter "hour" belongs to the interval [min;max] defined by a concrete rule then the attribute "greeting" of the parameter "app" will be set to the proper greeting. If no rules are satisfied, this multi-hit table will use the default greeting "Unknown Greeting". 

The second template

specifies how to define different salutations (Mr., Mrs., etc.) based on customer attributes Gender, Marital Status, and Age. If no rules are satisfied, this multi-hit table will use the default salutation "Unknown Salutation". 

Step 4. Creating Supporting Java Classes    ►top

We define a Java package "hello.rules" with the following classes:

Customer (Customer.java)

App (App.java)

GreetingRule (GreetingRule.java)

These classes are basic Java beans used inside rules and forms. To demonstrate the use of a more complex rule editor, we will implement the rule table for salutation rules as an OpenRules dynamic table. To do this we will define two classes:

SalutationRule implementes Checkable (SalutationRule.java)

and the class SalutationRules that extends DynamicTable (SalutationRules.java) by defining two methods:

public String getHeaderLayoutName() {

        return "salutationsTableHeader";

}

public String getRowLayoutName() {

        return "salutationsTableRow";

}

And finally the main Java class  is a placeholder for all other objects:

HelloManager (HelloManager.java)

The ruleEngine is define is the constructor. the formsEngine is defined in the index.jsp. At the application initialization the manager executes the method "getDefaults":

This method receives the greetingRules from the file HelloDefaultRules.xls using the method "getDefaultGreetingRules".  It receives the defaultSalutationRules using the method "getDefaultSalutationRules" and then creates salutationRules to support the proper dynamic graphical table. Then it creates an instance of the type ExternalRules using this method:

And finally the manager creates the default application "app" with a customer received from the file HelloData.xls:

Step 5. Creating Graphical Layouts in Excel     ►top

All GUI realted forms and rules are descibed in the file HelloForms.xls.  The mainLayout specifies a general layout for all three layout:

The layout "GenerateGreeting":

There two layouts to support "GreetingRules":

This form has a fixed number of rules (row), so a user may change only values of rules attributes.

The layouts "SalutationRules" represent a dynamic table:

Her is the rule table that specifies processing flow:

As you can see, the action "Save Changes" leads to the execution of the manager's method "updateRules":

 This method will create a new instance of the external rules (based on the latest changes introduced by rule editors), will mark external rules as "modified" that will force a rule engine to reinitialize itself before next run of the method "generateGreeting":

Step 6. Deploying and Executing the Web Application

To deploy this web application on the Tomcat server specified in the file build.properties, it is enough to double-click on deploy.bat.  To start the application make sure that your Tomcat is up and running and double-clock on run.bat.

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