Mark Nicholls <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > does anyone know of a very simple dotnet language....I've been looking > into rules engine type things so that relatively non technical operational > people can write simple 'if then' type code, most seem to be overly > complicated.....all I need is a very simple dot net language that can > create a dll with a static procedure.
Going from structured rules to "natural" text is easy. Going in the other direction is not easy at all. I suspect either you'll end up with something that has all the complexity of a VB-like language (i.e. has an implicit required syntax and keyword set), or all the complexity of a Perl-like language (i.e. lots of different syntaxes and keyword sets and many ways to say the same thing, but occasional weird failures and misunderstandings). Most rules-oriented solutions to this I've seen have graphical interfaces, either table-based or flow-chart based, with possibly some access to a back-end with more traditional programming-oriented syntax. You can't ignore that even though the rules might be simple, a language that can describe them amounts to a programming language, and programming languages with well-defined syntaxes happen to be the best way to express that. There's no real way around it: people specifying rules in precise, unambiguous language are programmers. -- Barry -- http://barrkel.blogspot.com/ =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor® http://www.develop.com View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
