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Rule Designer

The Clarive Rule Designer is the interface for designing, prototyping, writing and testing Clarive rules.

This document describes how to use the rule designer interface. For specific details on how to implement specific rules, head over to the (creating rules)[/rules/creating-rules] document.

The Rule Designer is divided into 3 specific area:

  • Rule explorer - navigate through available rules in the system
  • Rule editor - edit a rule content
  • Rule palette - list available ops for dragging and dropping

Rule Explorer

The rule explorer shows the list of rules available in the system. The rule explorer has 2 modes: list and tree. The mode can be changed with the list/tree button in the button panel.

Every rule has a name and an id. Also the modified time and the last modifier username is shown in the list.

Actions

Actions defined are:

  • Create - Use to start a configure a new rule.
  • Edit - Edit selected rule.
  • Delete - Delete selected rule.
  • Tree view - Organise the rules based on the type.
  • Activate - Activate selected rule.
  • Tools - Import or Export the rule to other Clarive system in YAML format.

Palette

The palette contains all available ops in the system.

What are ops anyway?

Clarive ops (from operations) are the elements that give a rule its functionality. They have been called tasks or actions, but we think ops, with just 3 letters, is a better, if not geeky, name for such tiny bit of functionality.

Depending on what plugins and features are installed, there may be more or less ops available to the user.

It has an action tab with two action:

Search - To find a rule with a mask as input.

Refresh - To refresh the palette

If the parameter show_in_palette is set to one in the JS config file, the operation defined will be available in the palette.

Palette Ops

It is divided in seven types of tasks:

  1. Statements -Provide control flow rule, they are IFs and Fors, and ad- hoc tasks.
  2. Services - Operating in the pass, they can be:
  3. Job Services - Tasks associated to a job.
  4. Generic Services - General type.
  5. Workflow - All services related to workflow rules.
  6. Blueprint - All variables created as a Resource that user can use in Blueprint rules.
  7. Rules - Allow including rules within other rules, these rules to be include have to be of independent type.
  8. Dashlets - Use to build dashboards.
  9. Fieldlets - Fieldlets that shape the form.

Rule Editor

The rule editor (central) panel is where the rule logic can be created and modified.

It's also the drag-and-drop destination for palette ops. Drag and drop ops from the palette into the rule editor to get started.

Rule Tree Area

Area where selected rule is displayed as a tree, it has an action tab with some operations, they are:

  • Refresh - To refresh the rule
  • Save - To save rule.
  • Check - To check rule (see Quality Analysis).
  • DSL - Raises up a new window with DSL code from the rule selected. This code can be executed. This functionality will be described in the rule palette page.
  • Tools - Some additional options:
  • Regular expression - Allow to search a regular expression.
  • Ignore case - Activate/Desactivate case sentitive to search text.
  • Blame by time - Mark the changes in the elements by a specific period of time.
  • Variables - Show rule variables (Resources).
  • Expand all : Expands every single rule in any job step.
  • Collapse all - Collapse every rule and step, just viewing start point.
  • Version - Expands all history versions from the rule selected. The output shows date, time and user who saved the rule. It is possible here to add tags to one or more previous versions of the rule by right-clicking on each selected version, selecting Add tag, and entering a name in the Tag field. This makes it possible to revert back to an earlier version in the event of an error occurring when deploying Topics using the latest version.
  • HTML - Displays in another navigator tab, op properties values and configuration from every op included in the selected rule.
  • Flowchart - Displays tree of the rule

Rule Runner

The rule runner is a debug panel shown when there are any issues found with the rule. It's possible to see the operation that caused the problem and a short description.

Creating a Rule

When creating a rule, the rule creation wizard opens. The user has to decide first which type of rule to create, type a name and configure the rule.

There are many types of rules that can be created using the Rule Designer. These are the available rule types in Clarive:

Read more about the different rule types in the creating rules documentation.

The rule creation options can be changed later if needed with the Edit button.