Hi everyone,

    This is to announce the latest new feature: Rule Categories. The updated source code is available at http://dynamicdom.tigris.org/

    Rule categories address the requirement for categorizing failed rules into errors vs. warnings, but it also allows for a much more flexible categorization such as “catastrophic, critical, recoverable” or “user, system” or “General, Financial, UserDetails”… etc. Basically, you choose your own categorization system. Here is an example:

      <xr:ruleset context="/PurchaseOrder">

            <xr:validate test="..." categories="error" />

            <xr:validate test="..." categories="warning" />

      </xr:ruleset>

If the first rule fails, for example, the error report will show the error as follows (notice the categories attribute):

    <xrr:error context="/PurchaseOrder" categories="error">

      <xrr:message>...</xrr:message>

      <xrr:node path="..." />

    </xrr:error>

You can also categorize a rule under several categories by using a space-separated list of categories:

      <xr:validate test="..." categories="error financial" />

Categories are also inherited from parent rulesets. For example:

      <xr:ruleset context="/PurchaseOrder" categories="header">

            <xr:validate test="..." categories="error" />

            <xr:validate test="..." categories="warning" />

      </xr:ruleset>

Or inherited from several up levels of rulesets:

      <xr:ruleset context="/PurchaseOrder/Item" categories="item">

            <xr:ruleset context="ItemDetails" categories="financial">

                  <xr:validate test="..." />

            </xr:ruleset>

      </xr:ruleset>

In this example, although the rule does not have the ‘categories’ attribute, it inherits the “item” and “financial” categories. If this rule fails, the error report will show the error as:

    <xrr:error context="ItemDetails" categories="financial item">

      <xrr:message>...</xrr:message>

      <xrr:node path="..." />

    </xrr:error>

And, in the XRules Object Model you can access the categories using the “Catagories” property of rule classes. Or, use the “EffectiveCategories” property to get the rule categories including all categories inherited from parent rulesets.

      // Iterate though the categories of a rule.

      CategoriesList cat = myRule.EffectiveCategories;

      if (cat.Count > 0)

      {

            foreach(string category in cat)

            {

                  // Iterate through the categories.

            }

      }

    Hope you find this feature useful.

Regards,

Waleed