Handling null when returning through Business Knowledge model in DMN - dmn

I am trying to make some Business rules using DMN on kie Server.
There I have structure data object and its list which is my input. I am using rule to validate my structure list and get only those who passes my condition.
I am using BusinessKnowledgeModel which has actual condition for each object and I have decision logic which iterated through my list and calls the BusinessKnowledgeModel function.
Decision Iterator Feel language code:
for inputParam in InputList return BusinessKnowledgeModel(inputParam)
In the BusinessKnowledgeMode, I have my function which consists of decision table that checks my condition through Feels expression.
Instead of getting null as otput from function, I just want to skip it.
My efforts:
I did try to explore trying to find various approaches; like finding if continue keyword can be used in for loop. Even tried adding constraint on Data objects, but not null constraint can't be added on Structures.

There is no equivalent of continue; operator which is typical in procedural languages as FEEL is an expression language. The closes analogy you can draw if you are familiar with say, Java, is that you need something equivalent of what you could do with the JDK Stream, e.g.: filtering in this case sounds appropriate.
It is likely you can achieve what you need by having your expression filtered:
(for inputParam in InputList return BusinessKnowledgeModel(inputParam))[item!=null]
Demonstration
In this example DMN model I have inputList as a list of numbers, and bkm() is a function returning the same number if it's divisible by 2, otherwise null:
if (modulo(p1, 2) = 0) then p1 else null
The Decision-1 node:
is filtering from the returned list of the for, only the numeric element, as you can see input list size is 10 element, Decision-1 list size is only 5 element, filtered out of the nulls
The complete example:
please notice the output column shows the list elements with indexing,
element index 0 is the value 2,
element index 1 is the value 4,
etc.

Related

How to take unique of a list in a DMN?

I want to take unique of all the elements in a input list to a decision.
For that I am trying to utilize the following FEEL functions in my DMN decision https://cloud.trisotech.com/help/index.html?dmn_feel_functions.htm, but it seems like only the following list of functions are available https://documentation.signavio.com/suite/en-us/Content/process-manager/userguide/dmn/use-literal-expressions.htm.
Does anyone have any idea where i can use the above functions in my DMN. I am trying to write FEEL in 'Expression' tab of my decision.
DMN specification provides a built-in List function to select distinct elements in a feel:list, it's called distinct values().
Example:
distinct values([1,2,3,2,1]) = [1,2,3]
as taken from the DMN specification.
You can use this in any literal expression for instance, or everywhere a FEEL expression is allowed.
Example:
This model, once executed, would result in:
{
My decision : [1,2,3]
}

Initialisation order in Lua Table Constructor

So, a table constructor has two components, list-like and record-like. Do list-like entries always take precedence over record-like ones? I mean, consider the following scenario:
a = {[1]=1, [2]=2, 3}
print(a[1]) -- 3
a = {1, [2]=2, [1]=3}
print(a[1]) -- 1
Is the index 1 always associated with the first list-like entry, 2 with the second, and so on? Or is there something else?
There are two types of tables in Lua, arrays and dictionaries, these are what you call "lists" and "records". An array, contains values in an order, this gives you a few advantages, like faster iteration or inserting/removing values. Dictionaries work like a giant lookup table, it has no order, it's advantages are how you can use any value as a key, and you are not as restricted.
When you construct a table, you have 2 syntaxes, you can seperate the values with commas, e.g. {2,4,6,8} thereby creating an array with keys 1 through n, or you can define key-value pairs, e.g. {[1]=2,[58]=4,[368]=6,[48983]=8} creating a dictionary, you can often mix these syntaxes and you won't run into any problems, but this is not the case in your scenario.
What you are doing is defining the same key twice during the table's initial construction. This is most generally impractical and as such hasn't really had any serious thought put into it during the language's development. This means that what happens is essentially unspecified behaviour. It is not completely understood what effect this will have, and may be inconsistent across different platforms or implementations.
As such, you should not use this in any commercial projects, or any code you'll be sharing with other people. When in doubt, construct an empty table and define the key-value pairs afterward.

How to match nodes only by value? (not defining specific property)

I want to search nodes by value only, which can be in any of node properties. I know that this is an expensive operation, but nodes will be cut off by some relationship conditions.
I want something like this:
MATCH (n: {*:"Search value"})
RETURN n
Where * imply "any property".
Is there a way to do this?
interesting tidbits can be found in this abstract regarding this topic and why it might not be implemented
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FPfGkgzhcRXVkleBLBsA92U94Mx4yafu3nO-Xf-NzsE/edit#heading=h.pyvdg2rbofq
Semantics of dynamic key expressions
Using a dynamic key expression like <mapExpr>[<keyExpr>] requires that <mapExpr> evaluates to a map or an entity, and that <keyExpr> evaluates to a string. If this is not the case, a type error is produced either at compile time or at runtime.
If this is given, evaluating <mapExpr>[<keyExpr>] first evaluates keyExpr to a string value (the key), and then evaluates <mapExpr> to a map-like value (the map). Finally the result of <mapExpr>[<keyExpr>] is computed by performing a lookup of the key in the map. If the key is found, the associated value becomes the result. If the key is not found, <mapExpr>[<keyExpr>] evaluates to NULL.
Thus the result of evaluating <mapExpr>[<keyExpr>] can be any value (including NULL
Caveats
Dynamic property lookup might entice users to encode information in property key names. This is bad practice as it interferes with planning, leads to unnatural data models, and might lead to exhausting the available property key id space. This is addressed by issuing a warning when a query uses a dynamic property lookup with a dynamic property key name.
To my knowledge, no. Seems to me that what you really are trying to do would be better achieved by creating a search index over the graph using something like elasticsearch or solr. This would give you the ability to search over all properties. Your choice of analyzer whilst indexing would give you the option of exact or partial value matches.

Sorted TStringList, how does the sorting work?

I'm simply curious as lately I have been seeing the use of Hashmaps in Java and wonder if Delphi's Sorted String list is similar at all.
Does the TStringList object generate a Hash to use as an index for each item? And how does the search string get checked against the list of strings via the Find function?
I make use of Sorted TStringLists very often and I would just like to understand what is going on a little bit more.
Please assume I don't know how a hash map works, because I don't :)
Thanks
I'm interpreting this question, quite generally, as a request for an overview of lists and dictionaries.
A list, as almost everyone knows, is a container that is indexed by contiguous integers.
A hash map, dictionary or associative array is a container whose index can be of any type. Very commonly, a dictionary is indexed with strings.
For sake of argument let us call our lists L and our dictionaries D.
Lists have true random access. An item can be looked-up in constant time if you know its index. This is not the case for dictionaries and they usually resort to hash-based algorithms to achieve efficient random access.
A sorted list can perform binary search when you attempt to find a value. Finding a value, V, is the act of obtaining the index, I, such that L[I]=V. Binary search is very efficient. If the list is not sorted then it must perform linear search which is much less efficient. A sorted list can use insertion sort to maintain the order of the list – when a new item is added, it is inserted at the correct location.
You can think of a dictionary as a list of <Key,Value> pairs. You can iterate over all pairs, but more commonly you use index notation to look-up a value for a given key: D[Key]. Note that this is not the same operation as finding a value in a list – it is the analogue of reading L[I] when you know the index I.
In older versions of Delphi it was common to coax dictionary behaviour out of string lists. The performance was terrible. There was little flexibility in the contents.
With modern Delphi, there is TDictionary, a generic class that can hold anything. The implementation uses a hash and although I have not personally tested its performance I understand it to be respectable.
There are commonly used algorithms that optimally use all of these containers: unsorted lists, sorted lists, dictionaries. You just need to use the right one for the problem at hand.
TStringList holds the strings in an array.
If you call Sort on an otherwise unsorted (Sorted property = false) string list then a QuickSort is performed to sort the items.
The same happens if you set Sorted to true.
If you call Find (or IndexOf which calls find) on an unsorted string list (Sorted property = false, even if you explicitly called Sort the list is considered unsorted if the Sorted property isn't true) then a linear search is performed comparing all strings from the start till a match is found.
If you call Find on a sorted string list (Sorted property = true) then a binary search is performed (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_search for details).
If you add a string to a sorted string list, a binary search is performed to determine the correct insertion position, all following elements in the array are shifted by one and the new string is inserted.
Because of this insertion performance gets a lot worse the larger the string list is. If you want to insert a large number of entries into a sorted string list, it's usually better to turn sorting off, insert the strings, then set Sorted back to true which performs a quick sort.
The disadvantage of that approach is that you will not be able to prevent the insertion of duplicates.
EDIT: If you want a hash map, use TDictionary from unit Generics.Collections
You could look at the source code, since that comes with Delphi. Ctrl-Click on the "sort" call in your code.
It's a simple alphabetical sort in non-Unicode Delphi, and a slightly more complex Unicode one in later versions. You can supply your own comparison for custom sort orders. Unfortunately I don't have a recent version of Delphi so can't confirm, but I expect that under the hood there's a proper Unicode-aware and locale-aware string comparison routine. Unicode sorting/string comparison is not trivial and a little web searching will point out some of the pitfalls.
Supplying your own comparison routine is often done when you have delimited text in the strings or objects attached to them (the Objects property). In those cases you often wat to sort by a property of the object or something other than the first field in the string. Or it might be as simple as wanting a numerical sort on the strings (so "2" comes after "1" rather than after "19")
There is also a THashedStringList, which could be an option (especially in older Delphi versions).
BTW, the Unicode sort routines for TStringList are quite slow. If you override the TStringList.CompareStrings method then if the strings only contain Ansi characters (which if you use English exclusively they will), you can use customised Ansi string comparisons. I use my own customised TStringList class that does this and it is 4 times faster than the TStringList class for a sorted list for both reading and writing strings from/to the list.
Delphi's dictionary type (in generics-enabled versions of Delphi) is the closest thing to a hashmap, that ships with Delphi. THashedStringList makes lookups faster than they would be in a sorted string list. you can do lookups using a binary search in a sorted stringlist, so it's faster than brute force searches, but not as fast as a hash.
The general theory of a hash is that it is unordered, but very fast on lookup and insertion. A sorted list is reasonably fast on insertion until the size of the list gets large, although it's not as efficient as a dictionary for insertion.
The big benefit of a list is that it is ordered but a hash-lookup dictionary is not.

Delphi array elements alphanumeric sort order?

Is the best way to sort an array in Delphi is "alphanumeric".
I found this comment in an old code of my application
" The elements of this array must be in ascending, alphanumeric
sort order."
If so ,what copuld be the reason?
-Vas
There's no "best" way as to how to sort the elements of an array (or any collection for that fact). Sort is a humanized characteristic (things are not usually sorted) so I'm guessing the comment has more to do with what your program is expecting.
More concretely, there's probably other section of code elsewhere that expect the array elements to be sorted alphanumerically. It can be something so simple as displaying it into a TreeView already ordered so that the calling code doesn't have to sort the array first.
Arrays are represented as a contiguous memory assignment so that access is fast. Internally the compiler just does a call to GetMem asking for SizeOf(Type) * array size. There's nothing in the way the elements are sorted that affects the performance or memory size of the arrays in general. It MUST be in the program logic.
Most often an array is sorted to provide faster search times. Given a list of length L, I can compare with the midpoint (L DIV 2) and quickly determine if I need to look at the greater half, or the lesser half, and recursively continue using this pattern until I either have nothing to divide by or have found my match. This is what is called a Binary search. If the list is NOT sorted, then this type of operation is not available and instead I must inspect every item in the list until I reach the end.
No, there is no "best way" of sorting. And that's one of the reasons why you have multiple sorting techniques out there.
With QuickSort, you even provide the comparison function where you determine what order you ultimately want.
Sorting an array in some way is useful when you're trying to do a binary search on the array. A binary search can be extremely fast, compared to other methods. But if the sort error is wrong, the search will be unable to find the record.
Other reasons to keep arrays sorted are almost always for cosmetic reasons, to decide how the array is sent to some output.
The best way to re-order an array depends of the length of the array and the type of data it contains. A QuickSort algorithm would give a fast result in most cases. Delphi uses it internally when you're working with string-lists and some other lists. Question is, do you really need to sort it? Does it really need to stay an array even?
But the best way to keep an array sorted is by keeping it sorted from the first element that you add to it! In general, I write a wrapper around my array types, which will take care of keeping the array ordered. The 'Add' method will search for the biggest value in the array that's less or equal to the value that I want to add. I then insert the new item right after that position. To me, that would be the best solution. (With big arrays you could use the binary search method again to find the location where you need to insert the new record. It's slower than appending records to the end but you never have to wonder if it's sorted or not, since it is...

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