eBusiness Technologies (ebTech)

Introduction to Drools

Dr. Adrian Giurca

Brandenburg University of Technology
Cottbus, Germany

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Repetition

• Embedding rules in large applications is a difficult task

• Many controversies and open questions when we want
to use libraries to connect AI Languages to Java
Applications
• Hard difficulties to share data between libraries and the
main application (Prolog facts versus Java classes)
• Logic can be difficult to be employed in rule modeling
• Fortunately we have Drools an open source Java-based
rule engine
• In addition, Drools employs a Java-based syntax for
rules

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Developing Rule-based applications
• Vocabulary constraints:
o The rule-based part of the application is based on the
existent domain vocabulary of your application
o Therefore you have to design rules considering this
vocabulary
• Is a standalone rule-based application?
o Then is just a server-side component
o You can add a basic JSP layer or a Java client
• Is an Enterprise application (JEE5)?
o Then the rule engine should be integrated at the
business layer
• Is a Web Service application?
o Then the rule engine should be controlled by the WS
EJB

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Drools Vocabulary is basically POJO

• POJO – Plain Old Java Object (search on Google)

package org.btu.it.userv.vocabulary;

class YoungDriver extends Driver {

// properties

//default constructor
public YoungDriver(){
}
//setters and getters for the properties
}

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Rules are grouped in rulesets

• Rulesets in Drools are captured by means of packages.

• A package is a placeholder for rules, imports, globals,
functions:
o Imports make vocabulary classes accessible to rules
o Globals are global variables. They are used to make
application objects available to the rules. They must be
understand as constants in the reasoning process.
o Functions are static Java functions usually designed to be
available in rules action part.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Sample ruleset (package)
package org.btu.it.userv.driverPremium
Ruleset name

#list any import classes here.

import org.btu.it.userv.vocabulary.YoungDriver;
import java.io.IOException;
// ... Vocabulary

#declare any global variables here

global java.io.BufferedWriter out; Global
global org.btu.it.userv.utils.Output writer; variables

// Rules

#write any global function here

function void writeLog(String text,
BufferedWriter out)throws IOException{
// function code comes here
}
# or imports such as Global
import function org.btu.it.userv.utils.Logger.writeLog functions

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Drools Rule structure
• A rule specifies that when a particular set of
conditions occur - specified in the Left Hand
Side (LHS), then do this - specified as a list
of actions in the Right Hand Side (RHS).

• A rule must have a unique name, in the

scope of the rule package.

• Attributes are optional.

• The rule LHS follows the when keyword. The

RHS follows the then keyword (ideally on a
newline). The rule is terminated by the end
keyword.

• Rules cannot be nested.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Rules condition part (LHS)
• Rule conditions part is a logical formula built by using
conjunction (,), disjunction (||), and negation (not)
on conditional elements
• There are two main conditional elements i.e. pattern
and eval

• The pattern condition is the most important one.

Basic and advanced pattern conditions are provided

• Essentially eval is a Boolean expression evaluator.

This can refer to variables that were bound in the rule
LHS, and functions in the rule package.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Actions (the RHS)
• The action part part should contain a list of actions to
be executed.
• Any valid Java code is allowed. However, is bad
practice to use imperative or conditional code in the
RHS of a rule; as a rule should be atomic in nature -
"when this, then do this", not "when this, maybe do
this".

• The RHS part of a rule should also be kept small, thus

keeping it declarative and readable.

• The main purpose of the RHS is to insert, retract or

modify facts from the working memory.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Standard Actions in RHS

• update(object, handle); will tell the engine that an

object has changed and rules may need to be
reconsidered.
• insert(new Something()); will place a new object
of your creation in working memory.
• insertLogical(new Something()); similar to
insert, but the object will be automatically retracted
when there are no more facts to support the truth of
the currently firing rule.
• retract(handle); removes an object from working
memory.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Slide No. 11

• This is Slide No. 11 (half time) and we don't

know yet how to use rules in a large
application?!

To do:
– Download Drools
– Use it. Make running an
example from their library

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

The basic pattern

• patternBinding is a variable bound to a Java object instance of

patternType bean.
• patternBinding is bound sequentially to each instance of the
class patternType for which the constraints holds.

For example:

$driver:Driver(age < 25)

The $driver variable is bound sequentially to all Driver

objects from the working memory for which the age value is
less than 25, something like:

X driver(X) && age(X) < 25

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Constraints (1)
• Are used in a pattern definition
• Logically they are conditions referring to different
properties of the pattern class type
• Can be combined in complex constraints by using logical
connectors

For example:
$driver:Driver(age < 25)

age < 25 is a (field) constraint

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Constraints (2)
• Constraints can be more complex:

• constraintGroup corresponds to a conjunction of constraints

• fieldConstraint represents constraints on the class properties.
There are three types of restrictions: Single Value Restriction,
Compound Value Restriction and Multi Restriction.
• inlineEvalConstraint can use any valid dialect expression as
long as it is evaluated to a primitive Boolean

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

 Field constraints (1)

• A field corresponds to a getter for a property on the bean

object. If your model objects follow the java bean pattern,
then fields are exposed using getXXX() or isXXX().
• You can access fields by using the bean-name convention (so
getType() can be accessed as type)
• For example,

YoungDriver(maritalStatus == MaritalStatus.MARRIED)
uses the getMaritalStatus() method on the YoungDriver
instance.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

 Field constraints (2)

• You can restrict a field by using a large number of

constructs based on various operators.

• fieldBinding is a variable bound to the value of the

fieldName property i.e.
YoungDriver($age:age < 25)
where $age is the fieldBinding, age is the fieldName
and <25 is the restriction

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

The eval pattern and inlineEvalConstraint

• eval and inlineEvalConstraint have similar model.

• Evaluates a specific expression to a Boolean
• Over use of eval reduces the declaratives of your rules and
can result in a poor performing engine.
• While 'evals' can be used anywhere the best practice is to
add it as the last conditional element in the LHS of a rule.

For example:
eval(isApprovedByManager($client, $vip))
supposing
isApprovedByManager() be a Boolean function.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Advanced patterns - from

• allows users to specify a source for patterns to reason over.

• This allows the engine to reason over data not in the Working
Memory.
• This allows integration with other application components and
frameworks. One common example is the integration with data
retrieved on-demand from databases using hibernate named
queries.

For example:
$item : OrderItem( value > 100 ) from $order.items
$item is bounded sequentially to all OrderItem objects
with value greater than 100 from the list $order.items

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

More complex from: using collect

• allows rules to reason over collection of objects collected

from the given source or from the working memory.

$drivers : ArrayList()
from
collect(
Driver( gender == 'F', noOfAccidents > 0 )
from $town.getDrivers() )

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

More complex from: using accumulate

• Is a form of collect
• Allows a rule to iterate over a collection of objects, executing
custom actions for each of the elements, and at the end
return a result object.

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Accumulate example

$total : Number( doubleValue > 100 )

from
accumulate(
OrderItem( order == $order, $value : value ),
init( double total = 0; ),
action( total += $value; ),
reverse( total -= $value; ),
result( total )
)

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009

Do you like rule-based applications?

• Attend the next lecture

o Tomorrow at 4PM in the same room

Adrian Giurca, eBusiness Technologies, Craiova, March 2009