OpenRules Release 2.2.1 is a minor release that provides the following features:

• Support for the latest JDK 5.0

• Support for the latest Eclipse 3.1

• A built-in Java library for rules-based Web GUI development.

Below is a detailed description of what was done in the release 2.2.1 and what changes may be required (if any) in your web applications after OpenRules 2.2.1 installation.

1. Support for JDK 5.0

The OpenRules 2.2.1 has been built using Java^TM 2 Platform Standard Edition Development Kit 5.0 (jdk1.5.0_05). So, now you can use OpenRules with JDK 1.4.* or JDK 1.5.* without problems.

2. Support for Eclipse 3.1

While the previous OpenRules 2.2.0 had already supported the newest Eclipse release 3.1 it was built using Eclipse 3.0 and required some initial options tuning. The release 2.2.1 has been built using Eclipse 3.1 and works smoothly with the default Eclipse 3.1 installation that is based on JDK 1.5. OpenRules 2.2.1 will continue to work fine with previous versions of Eclipse.

3. Java Library "Dialog"

Release 2.2.1 provides a better support for Web GUI development with OpenRules Forms. We added a Java class Dialog.java to the standard package "com.openrules.forms.gui.jsp" and when you create a JspFormsSession inside your standard jsp-file, it automatically creates  a dialog, an instance of the class Dialog. This object is passes to your main method html(Dialog dialog) or body(Dialog dialog). This object keeps track for the current and next dialog steps for every user session. The class Dialog is inherited from the standard HashMap, so you can use get and set methods to pass and access your business objects to Excel-based forms and rules. See details at http://openrules.com/man_forms.htm. Previously some of these features were available through an Excel file Interaction.xls from the standard project com.openrules.lib. While you can continue to use Interaction.xls, we split this file into two different files:

• Dialog.xls: defines convenience methods such as dialog() and actionButton() available globally inside all related Excel tables defined in your project.

• Validators.xls: defines standard input validators for OpenRules Forms.

We also renamed the deployed com.openrules.lib project from "LIB" to "com.openrules.lib".

4. Updated Sample Projects

All sample web applications were updated to reflect the introduced changes. The changes effected only applications that use OpenRules forms and include:

1. slightly modified index.jsp (see HelloForms)

2. additional import "com\openrules\forms\gui\jsp" inside the configuration file "openrules.java.build.xml"

3. updated reference to the openrules.forms.lib (instead of LIB) in the configuration file "com.openrules.properties".

A new sample project "hello.openrules.forms" that demonstrates all features of the rules-based Web development with a stand-alone Tomcat server is available from Inside Track. The user documentation is also updated to reflect the described features.