User development,

A new message was posted in the thread "jBPM 4.3 and business rules/Drools 
integration":

http://community.jboss.org/message/530592#530592

Author  : Patricia B
Profile : http://community.jboss.org/people/patriciab

Message:
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Hi all,
 
I implemented a couple of use cases for checking the integration of Drools rule 
within a jBPM workflow definition. It is a great step forward in having 
business rules integrated with jBPM activies, and allow the end user to specify 
the business rules to be invoked, but I ran into a few limitations, and I have 
a few questions about that.

1) jBPM expects to find the business rule deployed on the same deployment 
package with the process definition that is using that rule. IMHO this creates 
a pretty hard dependency between the rule files and the process definitions 
files, dependency that does not feel natural, as the process definitions 
changes and rule changes are not following the same pattern. On the real use 
case I can see business rules changing more frequent than the process 
definitions, and I also can see the same business rule being used by more than 
one process definition. And the process definitions that use the same business 
rule can be deployed on different deployment packages, on real life.
But having the constraint that the business rule and process definition that is 
using it to be on the same deployment package, pretty much imposes that all 
process definitions and all business rules for an application be deployed on 
the same deployment package, and every time when a process definition is 
modified to redeploy the whole package, not just the updated process definition.
 
I wonder if in the future releases, there is any alternative to this hard 
dependency between the business rule files and the process definition files 
being on the same deployment package. I wonder if it would make more sense to 
allow injection of the KnowledgeRule service into the jBPM RuleDeployer, and 
that service will know to return the correct KnowledgeBase based on the rule 
package and/or rule name, and/or rule file. This KnowledgeRule service will 
take care of loading the business rules from a custom location, and not from 
the jBPM deployment.

2) jBPM expects that all rule files are extension ".drl". This seems very 
limiting as Drools engine also has the decision table rules as excel files, or 
csv files, and also business rules using the designer with ".brl" file 
extension.
Is any plan for future releases to include the other rule files extensions 
besides the ".drl" one?
 
3) jBPM rule activity allows to specify the facts for a rule, and all rules 
deployed with the same process definition are fired.
I wonder if there is any plan for future releases to allow for a more granular 
rule state configuration, when a user can specify either the rule name, or the 
rule package, besides the rule facts. I can see on large applications business 
rules using the same facts, but actually having different functionality, and 
being able to specify the rule name or package, will fire the expected rule 
only.
 
I wonder if anybody else tried the jBPM Drools integration and whether it found 
out the same limitations as me. Any feedback is useful.
 
Thanks.

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