Build, Deploy, Utilize and Run

A Kie Project has the structure of a normal Maven project with the only peculiarity of including a kmodule.xml file defining in a declaratively way the KieBases and KieSessions that can be created from it. This file has to be placed in the resources/META-INF folder of the Maven project while all the other Kie artifacts, such as DRL or Excel files, must be stored in the resources folder or in any other subfolder under it.

Since meaningful defaults have been provided for all configuration aspects, the simplest kmodule.xml file can contain just an empty kmodule tag like the following:

In this way the kmodule will contain one single default KieBase. All Kie assets stored under the resources folder, or any of its subfolders, will be compiled and added to it. To trigger the building of these artifacts it is enough to create a KieContainer for them.

For this simple case it is enough to create a KieContainer that reads the files to be built from the classpath:

KieServices is the interface from where it possible to access all the Kie building and runtime facilities:

In this way all the Java sources and the Kie resources are compiled and deployed into the KieContainer which makes its contents available for use at runtime.

As explained in the former section, the kmodule.xml file is the place where it is possible to declaratively configure the KieBase(s) and KieSession(s) that can be created from a KIE project.

In particular a KieBase is a repository of all the application’s knowledge definitions. It will contain rules, processes, functions, and type models. The KieBase itself does not contain data; instead, sessions are created from the KieBase into which data can be inserted and from which process instances may be started. Creating the KieBase can be heavy, whereas session creation is very light, so it is recommended that KieBase be cached where possible to allow for repeated session creation. However end-users usually shouldn’t worry about it, because this caching mechanism is already automatically provided by the KieContainer.

Conversely the KieSession stores and executes on the runtime data. It is created from the KieBase or more easily can be created directly from the KieContainer if it has been defined in the kmodule.xml file

The kmodule.xml allows to define and configure one or more KieBases and for each KieBase all the different KieSessions that can be created from it, as showed by the follwing example:

Here the tag contains a list of key-value pairs that are the optional properties used to configure the KieBases building process. For instance this sample kmodule.xml file defines an additional custom operator named supersetOf and implemented by the org.mycompany.SupersetOfEvaluatorDefinition class.

After this 2 KieBases have been defined and it is possible to instance 2 different types of KieSessions from the first one, while only one from the second. A list of the attributes that can be defined on the kbase tag, together with their meaning and default values follows:

Similarly all attributes of the ksession tag (except of course the name) have meaningful default. They are listed and described in the following table:

As outlined in the former kmodule.xml sample, it is also possible to declaratively create on each KieSession a file (or a console) logger, one or more WorkItemHandlers and Calendars plus some listeners that can be of 3 different types: ruleRuntimeEventListener, agendaEventListener and processEventListener

Having defined a kmodule.xml like the one in the former sample, it is now possible to simply retrieve the KieBases and KieSessions from the KieContainer using their names.

It has to be noted that since KSession2_1 and KSession2_2 are of 2 different types (the first is stateful, while the second is stateless) it is necessary to invoke 2 different methods on the KieContainer according to their declared type. If the type of the KieSession requested to the KieContainer doesn’t correspond with the one declared in the kmodule.xml file the KieContainer will throw a RuntimeException. Also since a KieBase and a KieSession have been flagged as default is it possible to get them from the KieContainer without passing any name.

Since a Kie project is also a Maven project the groupId, artifactId and version declared in the pom.xml file are used to generate a ReleaseId that uniquely identifies this project inside your application. This allows creation of a new KieContainer from the project by simply passing its ReleaseId to the KieServices.

The KIE plugin for Maven ensures that artifact resources are validated and pre-compiled, it is recommended that this is used at all times. To use the plugin simply add it to the build section of the Maven pom.xml and activate it by using packaging kjar.

The plugin comes with support for all the Drools/jBPM knowledge resources. However, in case you are using specific KIE annotations in your Java classes, like for example @kie.api.Position, you will need to add compile time dependency on kie-api into your project. We recommend to use the provided scope for all the additional KIE dependencies. That way the kjar stays as lightweight as possible, and not dependant on any particular KIE version.

Building a KIE module without the Maven plugin will copy all the resources, as is, into the resulting JAR. When that JAR is loaded by the runtime, it will attempt to build all the resources then. If there are compilation issues it will return a null KieContainer. It also pushes the compilation overhead to the runtime. In general this is not recommended, and the Maven plugin should always be used.

Drools has 3 types of engine dependency that aggregate a required collection of dependencies.

drools-ruleunits-engine is the standard engine for rule units that enables an executable model.

drools-engine is the standard engine for traditional DRL syntax that enables an executable model.

drools-engine-classic is the old engine that utilizes an MVEL interpreter. The drools-engine-classic and drools-mvel are now deprecated, so use drools-ruleunits-engine or drools-engine instead.

It is also possible to define the KieBases and KieSessions belonging to a KieModule programmatically instead of the declarative definition in the kmodule.xml file. The same programmatic API also allows in explicitly adding the file containing the Kie artifacts instead of automatically read them from the resources folder of your project. To do that it is necessary to create a KieFileSystem, a sort of virtual file system, and add all the resources contained in your project to it.

Like all other Kie core components you can obtain an instance of the KieFileSystem from the KieServices. The kmodule.xml configuration file must be added to the filesystem. This is a mandatory step. Kie also provides a convenient fluent API, implemented by the KieModuleModel, to programmatically create this file.

To do this in practice it is necessary to create a KieModuleModel from the KieServices, configure it with the desired KieBases and KieSessions, convert it in XML and add the XML to the KieFileSystem. This process is shown by the following example:

At this point it is also necessary to add to the KieFileSystem, through its fluent API, all others Kie artifacts composing your project. These artifacts have to be added in the same position of a corresponding usual Maven project.

This example shows that it is possible to add the Kie artifacts both as plain Strings and as Resources. In the latter case the Resources can be created by the KieResources factory, also provided by the KieServices. The KieResources provides many convenient factory methods to convert an InputStream, a File, or a String representing a path of your file system to a Resource that can be managed by the KieFileSystem.

Normally the type of a Resource can be inferred from the extension of the name used to add it to the KieFileSystem. However it also possible to not follow the Kie conventions about file extensions and explicitly assign a specific ResourceType to a Resource as shown below:

Add all the resources to the KieFileSystem and build it by passing the KieFileSystem to a KieBuilder

When the contents of a KieFileSystem are successfully built, the resulting KieModule is automatically added to the KieRepository. The KieRepository is a singleton acting as a repository for all the available KieModules.

After this it is possible to create through the KieServices a new KieContainer for that KieModule using its ReleaseId. However, since in this case the KieFileSystem doesn’t contain any pom.xml file (it is possible to add one using the KieFileSystem.writePomXML method), Kie cannot determine the ReleaseId of the KieModule and assign to it a default one. This default ReleaseId can be obtained from the KieRepository and used to identify the KieModule inside the KieRepository itself. The following example shows this whole process.

At this point it is possible to get KieBases and create new KieSessions from this KieContainer exactly in the same way as in the case of a KieContainer created directly from the classpath.

It is a best practice to check the compilation results. The KieBuilder reports compilation results of 3 different severities: ERROR, WARNING and INFO. An ERROR indicates that the compilation of the project failed and in the case no KieModule is produced and nothing is added to the KieRepository. WARNING and INFO results can be ignored, but are available for inspection.

In some cases, it is possible to change the default severity of a type of build result. For instance, when a new rule with the same name of an existing rule is added to a package, the default behavior is to replace the old rule by the new rule and report it as an INFO. This is probably ideal for most use cases, but in some deployments the user might want to prevent the rule update and report it as an error.

Changing the default severity for a result type, configured like any other option in Drools, can be done by API calls, system properties or configuration files. As of this version, Drools supports configurable result severity for rule updates and function updates. To configure it using system properties or configuration files, the user has to use the following properties:

The KieBase is a repository of all the application’s knowledge definitions. It will contain rules, processes, functions, and type models. The KieBase itself does not contain data; instead, sessions are created from the KieBase into which data can be inserted and from which process instances may be started. The KieBase can be obtained from the KieContainer containing the KieModule where the KieBase has been defined.

When the KieBase needs to resolve types that are not in the default class loader, it will be necessary to create a KieBaseConfiguration with an additional class loader and pass it to KieContainer when creating a new KieBase from it.

KieSessions will be discussed in more detail in section "Running". The KieBase creates and returns KieSession objects, and it may optionally keep references to those. When KieBase modifications occur those modifications are applied against the data in the sessions. This reference is a weak reference and it is also optional, which is controlled by a boolean flag.

The KieScanner allows continuous monitoring of your Maven repository to check whether a new release of a Kie project has been installed. A new release is deployed in the KieContainer wrapping that project. The use of the KieScanner requires kie-ci.jar to be on the classpath.

A KieScanner can be registered on a KieContainer as in the following example.

In this example the KieScanner is configured to run with a fixed time interval, but it is also possible to run it on demand by invoking the scanNow() method on it. If the KieScanner finds, in the Maven repository, an updated version of the Kie project used by that KieContainer it automatically downloads the new version and triggers an incremental build of the new project. At this point, existing KieBases and KieSessions under the control of KieContainer will get automatically upgraded with it - specifically, those KieBases obtained with getKieBase() along with their related KieSessions, and any KieSession obtained directly with KieContainer.newKieSession() thus referencing the default KieBase. Additionally, from this moment on, all the new KieBases and KieSessions created from that KieContainer will use the new project version. Please notice however any existing KieBase which was obtained via newKieBase() before the KieScanner upgrade, and any of its related KieSessions, will not get automatically upgraded; this is because KieBases obtained via newKieBase() are not under the direct control of the KieContainer.

The KieScanner will only pickup changes to deployed jars if it is using a SNAPSHOT, version range, the LATEST, or the RELEASE setting. Fixed versions will not automatically update at runtime.

In case you don’t want to install a maven repository, it is also possible to have a KieScanner that works by simply fetching update from a folder of a plain file system. You can create such a KieScanner as simply as

where "/myrepo/kjars" will be the folder where the KieScanner will look for kjar updates. The jar files placed in this folder have to follow the maven convention and then have to be a name in the form {artifactId}-{versionId}.jar.

Maven supports a number of mechanisms to manage versioning and dependencies within applications. Modules can be published with specific version numbers, or they can use the SNAPSHOT suffix. Dependencies can specify version ranges to consume, or take advantage of SNAPSHOT mechanism.

StackOverflow provides a very good description for this, which is reproduced below.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30571/how-do-i-tell-maven-to-use-the-latest-version-of-a-dependency

See the POM Syntax section of the Maven book for more details.

http://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/pom-relationships-sect-pom-syntax.html

http://books.sonatype.com/mvnref-book/reference/pom-relationships-sect-project-dependencies.html

Here’s an example illustrating the various options. In the Maven repository, com.foo:my-foo has the following metadata:

If a dependency on that artifact is required, you have the following options (other version ranges can be specified of course, just showing the relevant ones here): Declare an exact version (will always resolve to 1.0.1):

Note that by default your own deployments will update the "latest" entry in the Maven metadata, but to update the "release" entry, you need to activate the "release-profile" from the Maven super POM. You can do this with either "-Prelease-profile" or "-DperformRelease=true"

The maven settings.xml is used to configure Maven execution. Detailed instructions can be found at the Maven website:

http://maven.apache.org/settings.html

The settings.xml file can be located in 3 locations, the actual settings used is a merge of those 3 locations.

The settings.xml is used to specify the location of remote repositories. It is important that you activate the profile that specifies the remote repository, typically this can be done using "activeByDefault":

Maven provides detailed documentation on using multiple remote repositories:

http://maven.apache.org/guides/mini/guide-multiple-repositories.html

The KieBase is a repository of all the application’s knowledge definitions. It will contain rules, processes, functions, and type models. The KieBase itself does not contain data; instead, sessions are created from the KieBase into which data can be inserted and from which process instances may be started. The KieBase can be obtained from the KieContainer containing the KieModule where the KieBase has been defined.

The KieSession stores and executes on the runtime data. It is created from the KieBase.

The event package provides means to be notified of Drools rule engine events, including rules firing, objects being asserted, etc. This allows separation of logging and auditing activities from the main part of your application (and the rules).

The KieRuntimeEventManager interface is implemented by the KieRuntime which provides two interfaces, RuleRuntimeEventManager and ProcessEventManager. We will only cover the RuleRuntimeEventManager here.

The RuleRuntimeEventManager allows for listeners to be added and removed, so that events for the working memory and the agenda can be listened to.

The following code snippet shows how a simple agenda listener is declared and attached to a session. It will print matches after they have fired.

Drools also provides DebugRuleRuntimeEventListener and DebugAgendaEventListener which implement each method with a debug print statement. To print all Working Memory events, you add a listener like this:

All emitted events implement the KieRuntimeEvent interface which can be used to retrieve the actual KnowlegeRuntime the event originated from.

The events currently supported are:

The KieRuntimeLogger uses the comprehensive event system in Drools to create an audit log that can be used to log the execution of an application for later inspection, using tools such as the Eclipse audit viewer.

KIE has the concept of stateful or stateless sessions. Stateful sessions have already been covered, which use the standard KieRuntime, and can be worked with iteratively over time. Stateless is a one-off execution of a KieRuntime with a provided data set. It may return some results, with the session being disposed at the end, prohibiting further iterative interactions. You can think of stateless as treating an engine like a function call with optional return results.

The foundation for this is the CommandExecutor interface, which both the stateful and stateless interfaces extend. This returns an ExecutionResults:

The CommandExecutor allows for commands to be executed on those sessions, the only difference being that the StatelessKieSession executes fireAllRules() at the end before disposing the session. The commands can be created using the CommandExecutor .The Javadocs provide the full list of the allowed commands using the CommandExecutor.

setGlobal and getGlobal are two commands relevant to both Drools and jBPM.

Set Global calls setGlobal underneath. The optional boolean indicates whether the command should return the global’s value as part of the ExecutionResults. If true it uses the same name as the global name. A String can be used instead of the boolean, if an alternative name is desired.

Allows an existing global to be returned. The second optional String argument allows for an alternative return name.

All the previous examples execute single commands. The BatchExecution represents a composite command, created from a list of commands. It will iterate over the list and execute each command in turn. This means you can insert some objects, start a process, call fireAllRules and execute a query, all in a single execute(…​) call, which is quite powerful.

The StatelessKieSession will execute fireAllRules() automatically at the end. However the keen-eyed reader probably has already noticed the FireAllRules command and wondered how that works with a StatelessKieSession. The FireAllRules command is allowed, and using it will disable the automatic execution at the end; think of using it as a sort of manual override function.

Any command, in the batch, that has an out identifier set will add its results to the returned ExecutionResults instance. Let’s look at a simple example to see how this works. The example presented includes command from the Drools and jBPM, for the sake of illustration. They are covered in more detail in the Drool and jBPM specific sections.

In the previous example multiple commands are executed, two of which populate the ExecutionResults. The query command defaults to use the same identifier as the query name, but it can also be mapped to a different identifier.

The StatelessKieSession wraps the KieSession, instead of extending it. Its main focus is on the decision service type scenarios. It avoids the need to call dispose(). Stateless sessions do not support iterative insertions and the method call fireAllRules() from Java code; the act of calling execute() is a single-shot method that will internally instantiate a KieSession, add all the user data and execute user commands, call fireAllRules(), and then call dispose(). While the main way to work with this class is via the BatchExecution (a subinterface of Command) as supported by the CommandExecutor interface, two convenience methods are provided for when simple object insertion is all that’s required. The CommandExecutor and BatchExecution are talked about in detail in their own section.

Our simple example shows a stateless session executing a given collection of Java objects using the convenience API. It will iterate the collection, inserting each element in turn.

If this was done as a single Command it would be as follows:

If you wanted to insert the collection itself, and the collection’s individual elements, then CommandFactory.newInsert(collection) would do the job.

Methods of the CommandFactory create the supported commands, all of which can be marshalled using XStream and the BatchExecutionHelper. BatchExecutionHelper provides details on the XML format as well as how to use Drools Pipeline to automate the marshalling of BatchExecution and ExecutionResults.

StatelessKieSession supports globals, scoped in a number of ways. We cover the non-command way first, as commands are scoped to a specific execution call. Globals can be resolved in three ways.

The CommandExecutor interface also offers the ability to export data via "out" parameters. Inserted facts, globals and query results can all be returned.

The KieMarshallers are used to marshal and unmarshal KieSessions.

An instance of the KieMarshallers can be retrieved from the KieServices. A simple example is shown below:

However, with marshalling, you will need more flexibility when dealing with referenced user data. To achieve this use the ObjectMarshallingStrategy interface. Two implementations are provided, but users can implement their own. The two supplied strategies are IdentityMarshallingStrategy and SerializeMarshallingStrategy. SerializeMarshallingStrategy is the default, as shown in the example above, and it just calls the Serializable or Externalizable methods on a user instance. IdentityMarshallingStrategy creates an integer id for each user object and stores them in a Map, while the id is written to the stream. When unmarshalling it accesses the IdentityMarshallingStrategy map to retrieve the instance. This means that if you use the IdentityMarshallingStrategy, it is stateful for the life of the Marshaller instance and will create ids and keep references to all objects that it attempts to marshal. Below is the code to use an Identity Marshalling Strategy.

In most cases, a single strategy is insufficient. For added flexibility, the ObjectMarshallingStrategyAcceptor interface can be used. This Marshaller has a chain of strategies, and while reading or writing a user object it iterates the strategies asking if they accept responsibility for marshalling the user object. One of the provided implementations is ClassFilterAcceptor. This allows strings and wild cards to be used to match class names. The default is ".", so in the previous example the Identity Marshalling Strategy is used which has a default "." acceptor.

Assuming that we want to serialize all classes except for one given package, where we will use identity lookup, we could do the following:

Note that the acceptance checking order is in the natural order of the supplied elements.

Longterm out of the box persistence with Java Persistence API (JPA) is possible with Drools. It is necessary to have some implementation of the Java Transaction API (JTA) installed. For development purposes the Bitronix Transaction Manager is suggested, as it’s simple to set up and works embedded, but for production use JBoss Transactions is recommended.

To use a JPA, the Environment must be set with both the EntityManagerFactory and the TransactionManager. If rollback occurs the ksession state is also rolled back, hence it is possible to continue to use it after a rollback. To load a previously persisted KieSession you’ll need the id, as shown below:

To enable persistence several classes must be added to your persistence.xml, as in the example below:

The jdbc JTA data source would have to be configured first. Bitronix provides a number of ways of doing this, and its documentation should be consulted for details. For a quick start, here is the programmatic approach:

Bitronix also provides a simple embedded JNDI service, ideal for testing. To use it, add a jndi.properties file to your META-INF folder and add the following line to it:

An empty kmodule.xml will produce a single KieBase that includes all files found under resources path, be it DRL, BPMN2, XLS etc. That single KieBase is the default and also includes a single default KieSession. Default means they can be created without knowing their names.

ks.getKieClasspathContainer() returns the KieContainer that contains the KieBases deployed onto the environment classpath. kContainer.newKieSession() creates the default KieSession. Notice that you no longer need to look up the KieBase, in order to create the KieSession. The KieSession knows which KieBase it’s associated with, and use that, which in this case is the default KieBase.

kmodule.xml will produce a single named KieBase, 'kbase1' that includes all files found under resources path, be it DRL, BPMN2, XLS etc. KieSession 'ksession1' is associated with that KieBase and can be created by name.

ks.getKieClasspathContainer() returns the KieContainer that contains the KieBases deployed onto the environment classpath. This time the KieSession uses the name 'ksession1'. You do not need to lookup the KieBase first, as it knows which KieBase 'ksession1' is assocaited with.

kmodule.xml will produce a single named KieBase, 'kbase2' that includes all files found under resources path, be it DRL, BPMN2, XLS etc. Further it will include all the resources found from the KieBase 'kbase1', due to the use of the 'includes' attribute. KieSession 'ksession2' is associated with that KieBase and can be created by name.

This example requires that the previous example, 'named-kiesession', is built and installed to the local Maven repository first. Once installed it can be included as a dependency, using the standard Maven <dependencies> element.

Once 'named-kiesession' is built and installed this example can be built and installed as normal. Again the act of installing, will force the unit tests to run, demonstrating the use case.

ks.getKieClasspathContainer() returns the KieContainer that contains the KieBases deployed onto the environment classpath. This time the KieSession uses the name 'ksession2'. You do not need to lookup the KieBase first, as it knows which KieBase 'ksession1' is assocaited with. Notice two rules fire this time, showing that KieBase 'kbase2' has included the resources from the dependency KieBase 'kbase1'.

kmodule.xml produces 6 different named KieBases. 'kbase1' includes all resources from the KieModule. The other KieBases include resources from other selected folders, via the 'packages' attribute. Note the use of wildcard '*', to select this package and all packages below it.

Only part of the example is included below, as there is a test method per KieSession, but each one is a repetition of the other, with different list expectations.

The pom.xml must include kie-ci as a dependency, to ensure Maven is available at runtime. As this uses Maven under the hood you can also use the standard Maven settings.xml file.

In the previous examples the classpath KieContainer used. This example creates a dynamic KieContainer as specified by the ReleaseId. The ReleaseId uses Maven conventions for group id, artifact id and version. It also obeys LATEST and SNAPSHOT for versions.

No kmodue.xml file exists. The project 'default-kiesession' must be built first, so that the resulting JAR, in the target folder, can be referenced as a File.

Any KieModule can be loaded from a Resource location and added to the KieRepository. Once deployed in the KieRepository it can be resolved via its ReleaseId. Note neither Maven or kie-ci are needed here. It will not set up a transitive dependency parent classloader.

No kmodue.xml file exists. The project 'named-kiesession' must be built first, so that the resulting JAR, in the target folder, can be referenced as a File.

Any KieModule can be loaded from a Resource location and added to the KieRepository. Once in the KieRepository it can be resolved via its ReleaseId. Note neither Maven or kie-ci are needed here. It will not setup a transitive dependency parent classloader.

No kmodue.xml file exists. The projects 'named-kiesession' and 'kiebase-include' must be built first, so that the resulting JARs, in the target folders, can be referenced as Files.

Creates two resources. One is for the main KieModule 'exRes1' the other is for the dependency 'exRes2'. Even though kie-ci is not present and thus Maven is not available to resolve the dependencies, this shows how you can manually specify the dependent KieModules, for the vararg.

This programmatically builds a KieModule. It populates the model that represents the ReleaseId and kmodule.xml, and it adds the relevant resources. A pom.xml is generated from the ReleaseId.

This programmatically builds a KieModule. It populates the model that represents the ReleaseId and kmodule.xml, as well as add the relevant resources. A pom.xml is generated from the ReleaseId.

Rule assets in Drools are built from executable rule models by default with the standard kie-maven-plugin plugin. The executable model is a more efficient alternative to the standard asset packaging in previous versions of Drools. However, if needed, you can modify or disable executable rule models to build a Drools project as a DRL-based KJAR instead of the default model-based KJAR.

Build your Drools project in the usual way, but provide an alternate build option, depending on the type of project:

Beginning in Drools 7.39, rule assets are built from executable rule models by default with the standard kie-maven-plugin plugin. The executable model is a more efficient alternative to the standard asset packaging in previous versions of Drools.

When you install Drools 7.39, this default executable model behavior is configured for all new projects that you create going forward. However, if you are upgrading to Drools 7.39 from a previous version of the product and you have not already enabled executable rule models, you must add the required dependency to your existing Drools projects so that your rule assets are built from executable models in Drools 7.39. If you do not use the kie-maven-plugin plugin or if the required drools-model-compiler dependency is missing from your project, then rule assets are built without executable models.

For more information about executable rule models, see Executable rule models.

In the pom.xml file of your Maven project or on the relevant class path of your Java project, add the following dependency to enable rule assets to be built from the default executable model:

This dependency compiles the executable model into Drools internal data structures so that it can be executed by the Drools rule engine.

The <version> is the Maven artifact version for Drools currently used in your project (for example, 7.59.0.Final).

RuleUnitData is an interface to define your Rule Unit. Rule unit implementation would be like this:

In this case, Measurement is your fact class, so you need to implement it as well.

The name of the rule unit class MeasurementUnit is linked to DRL rules using the unit statement.

Data sources are typed sources of data that rule units can subscribe to for updates. You interact with the rule unit through the data sources it exposes.

Drools supports the following types of data sources.

Subscribers to a data source are known as data processors. A data processor implements the DataProcessor<T> interface. This interface contains callbacks to all the events that a subscribed data source can trigger.

The DataHandle is an internal reference to an object of a data source. Each callback method might or might not be invoked, depending on whether the corresponding data source implements the capability. For example, a DataStream source invokes only the insert callback, whereas a SingletonStore source invokes the insert callback on set and the delete callback on clear or before an overwriting set.

Note that DataProcessor is a little internal detail. If you instantiate RuleUnitInstance, EntryPointDataProcessor is automatically bound to the rule unit’s data sources.

Finally, you instantiate a RuleUnitInstance using RuleUnitProvider to execute the rules.

Instead of writing a Java class, you can declare rule units directly in DRL. See Rule units in DRL.

Rules and processes can run with very restrict permissions, but the engine itself needs to perform many complex operations in order to work. Examples are: it needs to create classloaders, read system properties, access the file system, etc.

Once a security manager is installed, though, it will apply restrictions to all the code executing in the JVM according to the defined policy. For that reason, KIE allows the user to define two different policy files: one for the engine itself and one for the assets deployed into and executed by the engine.

One easy way to setup the environment is to give the engine itself a very permissive policy, while providing a constrained policy for rules and processes.

Policy files follow the standard policy file syntax as described in the Java documentation. For more details, see:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/guides/security/PolicyFiles.html#FileSyntax

A permissive policy file for the engine can look like the following:

An example security policy for rules could be:

Please note that depending on what the rules and processes are supposed to do, many more permissions might need to be granted, like accessing files in the filesystem, databases, etc.

In order to use these policy files, all that is necessary is to execute the application with these files as parameters to the JVM. Three parameters are required:

For instance:

java -Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=global.policy -Dkie.security.policy=rules.policy foo.bar.MyApp