DROOLS III

In DROOLS we can give fields a constraint:
e.g. Where a rule applies to Person where attribute Person.name must equal "john" we can
express this as Person(name=="john")
Further we can bind a field to a variable as in
Person(name:name) we can then refer to the value of Person.name in our rule definition as name.
or even (if I have understood this correctly :-) Person(name:name="john") would mean in a rules constraint apply where Person.name=="john" and bind that to the variable name.
We can also bind facts to variables as in john:Person(name=="john").

You can find the whole of Mark's Javapolis presentation
in power point here
And in Acrobat here

Finally Mark mentioned that Drools 3 is aiming to have a rule repository which:

• Handles rule definitions
• Rules can be changed with no re-deploy
• That uses JMS under the covers