Dependency Woes
Having had some success with the rules code sitting outside of Kowari (using RMI), I spent the weekend trying to bring it inside the project. Without that it was never going to scale.

Unfortunately, the rules code has led to a dependency nightmare. I need ItqlInterpreter to see an "apply" command, and so build a new rule framework based on the specified model. So the rules code needs access to a Session object in order to read the model. I then need to tell the database session to apply the rules (which in turn will be reading and writing on the session). So I suddenly have a dependency loop between rules and sessions. It is tempting to just bundle them together, but that doesn't quite do it either. As I mentioned the other day, I'm now using an ItqlInterpreter to parse my queries for me, so this leads to a loop between the iTQL module and the Kowari rules module.

The first step to address this has been to define a set of rule interfaces, and pull them into their own module. Then I defined a configurable rule engine item in the Kowari configuration file, to be loaded up via reflection, just like the resolvers and databases are. This solves some of the problems, and it also provides a perfect slot for a RuleML implementation at a later date.

I spent the entire weekend on this, and I'm still at it. Hopefully I'll be done in a few hours, as I really don't want to be bogged down in this any longer.