Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Lizet — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:08:33 GMT

Hello Maurice,

Thank you for commenting back. We will get a look at how to re-host the designer within an application so the business analysts can outline the rules without the need of a developer. It's a good start.

I already bookmarked your site and I'm sure I'll come back to it quite often for reference.

Thanks!

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Maurice — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 10:56:06 GMT

@Lizet,

The workflow designer is rehostable in your own applications. Right now it might not be quite as easy as you would like but it is completely doable. Using the rehosted designer you can save workflows and rules as XOML, ie XML, files. That might not be perfect for diffing but any tool like WinDiff will be able to show you the differences between the two versions.

When you start a workflow using XOML you pas the rules as a separate file. That way it is easy to pass in different rules for the same workflow dependent on a specific criteria like the start date. That might not solve your problem for long running though.

I am not aware of any white papers comparing WF against Java based rules engines. They might very well be out there but I have never seen them.

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Lizet — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:44:24 GMT

Hello Maurice and any WF developer reading.

This is a good site for reference and a good repository of samples.

I'm currently doing a research on rule engines in order to replace some code implemented in stored procedures. My team needs to cut down the proliferations of repeated t-sql code and make use of OO to declare the rules.

One of our main requirements is that business analysts that are most of the time not very technical should be able to draw or diagram the rule.

Being able to version or set the rule's effective date is a plus as well.

afaik, WF designer is embedded in the VS IDE, so the analysts would have to have the IDE installed.

There are some java based rule engines such as Jess and FairIssaac's ModelBuilder.

Is there any study or white paper alreday published on this topic that we could be referred to?

TIA!

Lizet

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

... — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 23:31:17 GMT

Good site! Interesting information.. )

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Maurice — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:36:01 GMT

These changes are only for a single workflow instance. So you will need to examine every existing workflow, determine if changes are needed to the workflow type and if so make the changes.

I typically add this to the actual host program as this is something you cannot do until you have started the WF runtime. And that means the workflows can start running so you need to have the proper runtime configuration.

Sorry about the code being truncated. Even though you cannot see the code you can still select all the lines and copy it to notepad. Not perfect but at least a workaround so you can see all the code. I will take more care in the future.

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Damian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:03:37 GMT

How would you implement this on say a live site? Would you simply build a little console app for the project simply for uploading changes to the workflow? Or would you have to plumb this code into the main system to update every single workflow item created?

And does this update a single instance or the workflow as a whole?

re: Changing a Declarative Rule Condition at runtime

Damian — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:59:44 GMT

Is there anything you can do about the fact the code examples are getting truncated by the column and therefore some of the examples missing?