Major Changes to Consider During Migration
The major changes are related to the fact that OpenRules no longer uses Ant-based configuration files.  So, you do not need any more ANT-based configuration files, property files, or environment variables.  Your rules repository can be located anywhere in your local file system and/or include Excel and XML files from remote locations. 

OpenRules no longer includes projects lib.ant, jacarta-tomcat, jacarta-tomcat-deployer, and lib.axis.  We assume that you have Ant already installed.  You also may use your own installation of Apache Tomcat and Axis (if you need them).  All jars-files you may need for the configuration of OpenRules projects are now located in the directory openrules.config/lib.  There are only there jars files that include OpenRules specific software:

1. openrules.all.jar
2. com.openrules.tools.jar
3. com.openrules.java.eval.jar

You will definitely need openrules.all.jar.  The com.openrules.tools.jar is needed if you use an optional library of convenience Java methods.  The com.openrules.java.eval.jar is a new jar that is needed only if you want to add a batch rules validator to your non-Eclipse projects.  All other jars inside openrules.config/lib are commonly available under Open Source licenses.  There are a few build-files inside openrules.config that are used for the convenience of OpenRules sample projects but you do not need them in run-time.

After the installation of the Release 3.0.0, you may get rid of the old configurations files and add the proper references to the table "Environment" in your main Excel-files.  In new sample projects most rules are located in a separate subdirectory "rules".  A program that invokes rules refers to the main xls-file using prefix notation such as "file:", "classpath:", "http://", "ftp://", etc.  For example,
in the HelloJava project, the location is defined as a string
"file:rules/main/HelloCustomer.xls" that means that the main file HelloCustomer.xls is located in the subdirectory "rules/main" of the base project directory.

The changes you have to make to the existing OpenRules projects are minimal but necessary.  Please make sure that you save your working OpenRules installations before installing a new release.  If for some reasons you need to download a previous OpenRules release again, you can find one at http://openrules.com.

Automatic Migration of Eclipse Projects

If you work inside Eclipse IDE, OpenRules provides a new Eclipse plug-in called "com.openrules.converter" that converts your old Eclipse projects to OpenRules-3.  Right-click on your old OpenRules project and choose "Convert to OpenRules-3".  The plugin will automatically make the proper changes to your ".project" file and will add OpenRules nature to it.
 

How To Migrate a Basic Rule Project

First compare the structure of the old and new sample project HelloJava.  Here are instructions for moving an old project to a new one.  You can make similar changes in your own project.

1. Remove package src/com.openrules
2. Remove files src/openrules.properties and src/openrules.java.build.xml
3. Create a folder "rules" in your project base directory. Create a subfolder "rules/main" and copy into it your main xls-file.  If you use Eclipse right-click on the folder "rules/main" and select Build Path + Use as Source Folder.
4. Copy your old folder's "include" with all included xls-files into "rules".
5. In your Java program that invokes rules (such as RunHelloCustomer.java) add the prefix "file:rules/main/" before the name of the main xls-file.  For example: String fileName = "file:rules/main/HelloCustomer.xls";
6. In your main xls-files you have to modify the table "Environment".  Look at the file HelloCustomer.xls from the sample project HelloJava. It demonstrates two ways to refer to the included xls-files.  In most cases, you would prefer to define your included xls-files relative to the
   directory where your main xls-file is located.  In the HelloJava example, the main file "rules/main/HelloCustomer.xls" refers to the included file "rules/include/HelloRules.xls" by using the attribute "include" with the value "../include/HelloRules.xls".  Another way to do it is to define first a new attribute "include.path" as "../include/" and set references to all included files relative to this path using corner brackets like <HelloRules.xls>.  See more details at the new section Rules Repository.
7. If your xls-files use some Java classes, you should add a new attribute "import.java" inside the table "Environment". For example, HelloCustomer.xls uses a custom Java package "hello". So, the Environment table contains an attribute "import.java" with the value "hello.*".  It makes all classes from the package "hello" visible to all xls-files from this project.  You also can list certain Java classes only by name, e,g. "hello.Customer".  HelloJava project also uses the standard OpenRules package com.openrules.tools. In particular, it uses static methods such as out(message) from the Java class com.openrules.tools.Methods.  That’s why the Environment table also includes another new attribute “import.static” with the value “com.openrules.tools.Methods”.
8. If your xls-files use some XML files to define new data types, you should define a new attribute "import.schema" inside the table "Environment".  For example, the sample project HelloXMLCustomer uses the file Customer.xml that resides in the project classpath (subdirectory “bin” in this case).  So, the Environment table contains an attribute "import.schema" with the value “classpath:/Customer.xml”.
   
    

How To Migrate a Web Application

OpenRules installation no longer includes the Tomcat-based project "jakarta-tomcat" and "jakarta-tomcat-deployer".  In most practical cases, people who develop web application use their own Tomcat installations (or other web application servers).  OpenRules 3.0.0 standard examples demonstrate how to work with Apache Tomcat 5.5.17 or WebSphere  WAS 6.1.

We will use a sample project HelloForms to compare web applications for OpenRules 2.* and OpenRules-3.  Here are instructions for moving an old project to a new one.  You can make similar changes to your own project. We will use one directory “war” that will contain all rules, jsp, and xml files.
 

1. Create a subdirectory "war/rules/main" and move here the main xls-file HelloWeb.xls to it.
2. Create separate subdirectories war/rules/data, war/rules/logic, and war/rules/gui and move into them the included files HelloData.xls, HelloRules.xls, and HelloForms.xls correspondingly. 
3. Remove src/openrules.properties, src/openrules.java.build.xml, and subdirectory src/com/openrules.
4. Modify the file war/index.jsp that invokes OpenRulesEngine.  Now this engine is created automatically by an instance of OpenRulesSession in the following way:
   
   String xlsMain = "file:../webapps/HelloForms/rules/HelloWeb.xls";
   String s_attr = "openrules_session";
   OpenRulesSession openrules_session =
   (OpenRulesSession) session.getAttribute(s_attr);
   if (openrules_session == null )
   {
      openrules_session = new OpenRulesSession(xlsMain);
      session.setAttribute( s_attr, openrules_session);
      System.out.println("NEW SESSION");
   }
   
   Usually jsp-files are similar for most web applications and you only need to change the location of your main xls-file defined by the variable xlsMain. In this case we use the prefix “file:” to point to the fact that our main file HelloWeb.xls is deployed on the Tomcat server and is located in the subdirectory “/webapps/HelloForms/rules”.  This subdirectory is located on the same level as Tomcat’s base directory “bin” from where Tomcat starts.  You can have different locations of your main xls-files for different web servers.
5. Modify the table "Environment" in you main xls-file HelloWeb.xls.  Now the attribute “include” is described with three sub-rows:
   ../data/HelloData.xls
   ../logic/HelloRules.xls
   ../gui/HelloForms.xls
   These correspond to the locations of our three included xls-files relative to the directory of the main HellWeb.xls file.  The attribute “import.static” points to the class com.openrules.tools.Methods from the standard OpenRules package com.openrules.tools.  We need this attribute because our xls-files use standard static methods such as “out(message)”.
6. Modify the build.xml.  Now you can run the target “build” to create HelloForms.war file and the target “deploy” to deploy this file to the Tomcat server described in the build.properties.

How To Migrate a Web Service

OpenRules installation no longer includes project "lib.axis" and we assume that you have Apache Axis 1.4 pre-installed.  We will use a sample project HelloWS to compare web services for OpenRules 2.* and OpenRules-3. 

Similarly to a basic rules project, we should move all xls-files in the directory war/rules and remove old configuration files and properties.

Similarly to a web application, we will deploy a rule service HelloWS on the Apache Tomcat 5.5.17 pre-installed by a customer.  The locations of Apache Tomcat and Axis are described in the file "build.properties". 

We also need to modify the build.xml.  Now you have three targets to run:

For more information look at the sections Getting Started, Configuration, and Deployment.



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