5 things I hate about Red Hat Decision Manager (RHDM)

Red Hat Decision Manager (RHDM) is a powerful platform for the development and deployment of automate business rules-based decisions. Its features include automate decision making, optimising resources, and business-friendly user interface. It sounds very promising but is not quite stable. Here is the list why I hate RHDM. Disclaimer: The following points are based on version 7.0.0. These issues may be resolved in the latest version. # Failure at Hello World Tutorial Red Hat has provided a Hello World tutorial for people to try the product. However, it never tells you that you would probably fail at step 6 when you run the init.ps1 script to install the platform. You have to set execution policy to RemoteSigned as the default PowerShell script execution policy is set to Restricted. It would be nice if this is included as a note for people who do not know. For those who hit this error, you may run this command in your PowerShell and re-run the init.ps1: ``` Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned ``` # Low flexibility when importing your project When you want to import your project, you can click Import Project in your repository. RHDM only provides importing from a repository URL, which means you cannot import your project from a zip file. Moreover, you cannot specify which branch you want to import. For the version control in the enterprise, your development project is never on the master branch and you have to find another way to deal with it. # Zero file found after indexing your project After importing your project, RHDM will index each files. However, you may see there is only zero file in your project after a period of time. This may be caused by the absence of Maven or incorrect setup. You have to install Maven in your machine and set up your M2_HOME pointing to your maven directory and add Maven bin directory to PATH in Environment Variables. This should have included in prerequisites in the tutorial. The git for RHDM can be found in RHDM_HOME/target/jboss-eap-7.1/bin/.niogit. You may clone it as a local git to download your modified files on the platform in a rapid way. You may also modify the files in your local git and push them back to RHDM. However, you cannot push new files to RHDM because it does not re-index them. Therefore, after pushing the files, you will not able to see those files in RHDM. However, when you create a new file with the same name as the file you pushed, it will prompt an error saying this file does exist. Hence, this basically is a non-accessible file. An alternative is to create a file first, pull it, update the file, and push it back. However, it would be extremely painful if you plan to push a lot of new files to RHDM such as deploying a repository from one RHDM to another one. # Guided Rule Editor Bug If you write a guided rule, you have to pay attention to each condition when using the guided rule editor. When your condition is invalid, it may screw the whole rule up after saving it. You will not be able to open it again and you have to back up your project and re-import it again. # You may not be able to restart RHDM service / server without stopping and removing KIE containers After building and deploying your project, you can see your KIE container in Execution Servers. If you plan to restart RHDM service or server, you have to stop and remove all KIE containers prior to the restart. If you skip this step, the service may not be back on again. You may need to set up the whole thing again.