Ruleby was: Rules based policy engine

[matt joyce]

Tilman Baumann wrote:
> Scott wrote:
>   
>> I just found this inference engine.
>>
>> http://ruleby.org/wiki/Ruleby
>>
>> I working on a Rails project think Ruby is a great language to work 
>> with.  And Ruby is pretty small..
>>     
>
> A bit too many layers there for my taste. :)
> A domain specific rules language implemented in ruby embedded in c?
> The ruby layer does not seem to be thin enough to justify that.
> (ok, writing rules in ruby is kind cool. As would any other real 
> language be. Like lightweights like lua or certain lisp-ish languages. 
> Even javascript would not be bad.)
>
> Btw. I like the idea of a rules language. But why not something simple 
> and stupid like for example SIEVE filters in cyrus imap.
> That's a hand full of yacc and lex magic and some stupid engine code.
> I mean, what we can match is pretty much defined by the fact that we 
> match numbers and SMS.
> A hand full of logic expressions on pre defined attributes should be enough.
> My email filter is not smarter too, but email a lot more complicated. 
> And it works well.
>
> If someone puts the effort in to something like Prolog or Ruleby i will 
> not argue. But it seems a bit overkill to me.
>
>   
I agree with Rusty's idea (somewhere in this thread), if it's built as 
modules, the rules processing could be done by various efforts.
Python, Ruby, Sieve, Prolog, Datalog, C; how fantastic that we have the 
chance (and choice) of any (all), including those we haven't thought of 
yet.  Fertile times indeed!

For some (me) the FR is a toy of sorts, something to explore.
For others it's a tool, something to solve a problem with.
I suspect it's partly an act of rebellion too.

Matt