An important design feature built into OpenRules is the ability to catch as many rules errors as possible at design time rather that at run-time when it is basically too late.  Just like programming code bugs, an error in a single rule can have catastrophic consequences.  OpenRules provides several tools for rules validation.

Rule Validation with Eclipse Plug-In

OpenRules Eclipse Plug-in diagnoses any errors in Excel-files before you deploy or start your OpenRules-based application.  It automatically diagnoses errors in the Excel-files and displays the appropriate error message(s) inside Eclipse views.  OpenRules displays a diagnostic log with error messages that include hyperlinks that may open the proper Excel file with a cursor identifying the cell where the error occurred.

Batch Rule Validator

If you are using a stand-alone version of OpenRules without the Eclipse IDE, you still can validate your Excel-files.  OpenRules provides a special validation module, the batch Rule Validator, that allows you to test all of the xls-files contained in your rule project. 

You may invoke the Rule Validator by executing the standard Ant target "compile" from the provided build.xml file.  It usually executes two targets -- "compile.java" and "compile.xls".   In Windows, you invoke the target "compile" by double-clicking on the file compile.bat.  The appropriate files are included in most standard OpenRules sample projects.