Maintaining the Dynamic Rulebase

Aion provides two principal facilities for maintaining persistent dynamic rules. (For more information about dynamic rules, see Dynamic Rules in the User Guide.) These facilities are:

• Dynamic Rulebase Administrator. The Dynamic Rulebase Administrator provides facilities for administering the rulebase. Rulebase administration includes controlling user access to rulebase management functions and keeping the rulebase in sync with the Aion applications that use dynamic rules. In particular, the Dynamic Rulebase Administrator enables a domain interface of an Aion application to be imported into a rulebase. (For a definition of domain interface, see the Domain Interfaces section in the User Guide.) The Dynamic Rulebase Administrator also provides facilities to keep the rulebase synchronized with the changes made to the domain interface in the Aion application. For more information about the Dynamic Rulebase Administrator, see the Dynamic Rulebase Administrator.
• Dynamic Rule Manager. The Dynamic Rule Manager enables a domain expert to create and maintain dynamic rules outside the Aion development environment and to access the Dynamic Rule Repository. The Dynamic Rule Manager provides dynamic rule editors that are similar to the rule editors in the Aion development environment. It also allows access to the Dynamic Rule Repository for saving and viewing rule history. For more information about the Dynamic Rule Manager, see the Dynamic Rule Manager.

The Dynamic Rule Manager provides a user interface into the Aion rulebase. However, in a robust business application, Aion users will want to augment the rulebase with customized fields or even additional tables, and therefore will require extensions to the Dynamic Rule Manager. These extensions will take the form of utilities and user-written application programs to manage the new rulebase features. Aion also provides a library (DynRELib) that includes facilities for updating the core dynamic rule structures in the Aion rulebase (if you choose to write your own rule editor). For a description of the structure of the default Aion rulebase, see the appendix "Rulebase Structure".

Note: For more information about DynRELib, see the "DynRELib" chapter in the online Reference.