This Preface contains these topics:
Oracle Fusion Middleware Language Reference Guide for Oracle Business Rules is intended for application developers and Oracle Application Server administrators who perform the following tasks:
Develop rule enabled applications
Debug rule enabled applications
Deploy and Administer rule enabled applications.
Develop rulesets for those who prefer a technical language environment instead of the Oracle Business Rules Rule Author graphical environment for rule authoring.
Need to use Oracle Business Rules RL Language advanced features that are not available in the Oracle Business Rules Rule Author environment.
To use this document, you need to be familiar with the Java programming language.
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For more information, see the following documents in the Oracle Business Process Management and SOA Suite 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.9) documentation sets:
This section describes the conventions used in the text and code examples of this documentation set. It describes:
| Convention | Meaning |
|---|---|
| boldface | Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary. |
| italic | Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values. |
monospace |
Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter. |
Each RL Language command in the guide is shown in a format description that consists of a variant of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) that includes the symbols and conventions in the following table.
| Symbol or Convention | Meaning |
|---|---|
| [ ] | Brackets enclose optional items. |
| { } | Braces enclose items only one of which is required. |
| | | A vertical bar separates alternatives within brackets or braces. |
| * | A star indicates that an element can be repeated. |
| delimiters | Delimiters other than brackets, braces, vertical bars, stars, and ellipses must be entered as shown. |
| boldface | Words appearing in boldface are keywords. They must be typed as shown.
(Keywords are case-sensitive in some, but not all, operating systems.) Words that are not in boldface are placeholders for which you must substitute a name or value |
| underline | When on the left side of a production ( ::= ) indicates a definition for a non-terminal symbol. |
| underline | When found on the right side of a production, ::= , a link, which is a non-terminal symbol, links to the definition for the non-terminal symbol. |
| italic text | Semantic information about non-terminals, such as the required data type for an expression or a descriptive tag used in following discussion, is in italics. |