SessionDoc

CER allows you to output HTML documentation regarding a session ("SessionDoc").

This documentation provides a record of all the rule objects created during the session, and when used in conjunction with your tests can be a powerful debugging aid.

It can be useful to use JUnit's tearDown hook point to force all the test methods in your test class to output their SessionDoc:

@Override
          protected void tearDown() throws Exception {
          /*
          * Write out SessionDoc, to a directory named after the test
          * method.
          */
          final File sessionDocOutputDirectory =
          new File("./gen/sessiondoc/" + this.getName());
          sessionDoc.write(sessionDocOutputDirectory);

          super.tearDown();
          }

Here is the main SessionDoc page for a testSelfMadeMillionaireScenario test :

Figure 1. SessionDoc for the testSelfMadeMillionaireScenario test

Some key details on this page are:

• The date and time that the SessionDoc was created;
• The strategies that the session was created with;
• A list of rule sets whose rule objects were captured in the SessionDoc; and
• Whether "used by" links are included.

Clicking on the link for the sole rule set FlexibleRetirementYearRuleSet shows its rule objects:

Figure 2. Rule Objects for the FlexibleRetirementYearRuleSet rule set

This page shows:

• The "external" (bootstrap) rule objects created by client code during this session (only one was created in the test); and
• The "internal" rule objects created by rules during this session (none calculated for this test).

Clicking on the details link for the sole FlexibleRetirementYear rule object shows its SessionDoc:

Figure 3. SessionDoc for the FlexibleRetirementYear rule object

At the top (not shown) are summary details for the rule object, and then every rule attribute on the rule object is listed, with the following details:

• Name

  The name of the rule attribute;

• Declared type

  The type of the rule attribute as declared in the rule set. The actual runtime value may be from a subtype of this declared type;

• State

  The state of the value, i.e. whether it was:

  • CALCULATED

    Calculated by rules;

  • SPECIFIED

    Explicitly specified by client code, replacing any defined calculation, or initialized¹as part of a create expression;

  • NOT_YET_CALCULATED

    Not explicitly specified, not calculated during rules execution (because the value was never requested by any other calculations or tests); or

  • ERROR

    An error occurred during the calculation of the value (see the application logs or console output for details and calculation stack of the error).

• Value

  A display representation of the value. If the value was never calculated (NOT_YET_CALCULATED), or is in error (ERROR) then "?" will be displayed. If the value is a rule object, then the value will be shown as a navigable hyperlink so that you can see the details of that rule object; and

• Derivation

  The RuleDoc derivation of the attribute (without any links). For more information on RuleDoc, see RuleDoc.

• Depends on

  Links to the attributes which were used to calculate this value.

• Used by

  (Optional) Links to the attributes which used this value when calculating their values.

For rule objects that are stored on CER's database tables, you can create SessionDoc for these stored rule objects by running the curam.creole.util.DumpOutRuleObjects class, with a single argument being the name of a directory in which to create the SessionDoc. The DumpOutRuleObjects utility retrieves all rule objects from CER's database tables, and thus the action for each external rule object will be "retrieved". Any internal rule objects will be created (as they are not stored) and thus will show an action of "created".