Rules Definition Evaluation: Data Modeling

[Ranga S]

Hi

I was wondering if someone could help me with modeling rules data. Here are the requirements for my use-case:

• A node in the graph would represent a domain entity. Lets call it a "Partition" type
• Multiple "filters/criterias" could be defined for a Partition
• Filter could be defined as another node type. For e.g.: "Country", "Region", "Load"
• Queries would be of the form: Retrieve the list of partitions that match an input criteria
• E.g.: Country IN ['China', 'India'], Region = 'Primary', Load > 40

Here is what I am struggling with:

• Could a Graph DB used for my use-case?
• Defining thresholds/operators for each filter
• Each filter type could have a value and also an "operator" 
• Dynamic query creation based on input criteria
• Should I retrieve all the nodes and based on their filters create the appropriate queries?
• Or is there a way to create the queries based on the input criteria and then retrieve the nodes that match that?
• How should nested criteria be modeled/evaluated?

Thanks for your help.

Ranga

[Mahesh Lal]

Graphs do sound suited to your problem. 

Moe replies inline.

On 26 January 2016 at 22:48, Ranga S <sra...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

I was wondering if someone could help me with modeling rules data. Here are the requirements for my use-case:

• A node in the graph would represent a domain entity. Lets call it a "Partition" type
• Multiple "filters/criterias" could be defined for a Partition
• Filter could be defined as another node type. For e.g.: "Country", "Region", "Load"
• Queries would be of the form: Retrieve the list of partitions that match an input criteria
• E.g.: Country IN ['China', 'India'], Region = 'Primary', Load > 40

Here is what I am struggling with:

• Could a Graph DB used for my use-case?
• Defining thresholds/operators for each filter
• Each filter type could have a value and also an "operator" 

Can you please elaborate on what would filter type, value and operator be?

Is it something like filter_type:"Population", value:1Billion, operator:"Less than"? 

• Dynamic query creation based on input criteria
• Should I retrieve all the nodes and based on their filters create the appropriate queries?
• Or is there a way to create the queries based on the input criteria and then retrieve the nodes that match that?

Filtering can be modelled as a traversal and you can construct queries based on some input criteria to retrieve the nodes that you want.  

• How should nested criteria be modeled/evaluated?

Can you give and example of this to help the community understand this better?

Thanks for your help.

Ranga

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   Mahesh Lal

[Ranga S]

Thanks Mahesh. Answers to your questions are as follows:

Q: Can you please elaborate on what would filter type, value and operator be? Is it something like filter_type:"Population", value:1Billion, operator:"Less than"? 

A: Yes, that is exactly what it means. I had specified an example in my original question as well. E.g. Country IN ['China', 'India'], Region = 'Primary', Load > 40. Here the filter types (nodes) are: "Country", "Region", "Load". Operators would be: "IN", "=", ">". Value would be: ['China', 'India'], Primary, 40. 

My input criteria could be: {Country = 'India', Load = 70}. This should match the example defined above (even though the Region filter is missing). You had mentioned that I need to model filtering as a traversal. Could you provide an example of this? Should I traverse the graph first, get all the filters and then apply the criteria as queries?

Q: Can you give and example of this (how nested criteria should be modeled) to help the community understand this better?

We could have a filter defined as: Type - "OS Version", Value - "10.3.4.5", Operator - ">"

An input criteria of "10.4" should match the above and so should "10.3.4.5.1"

I was thinking about defining this filter as four separate "nested" nodes (and hence the question). 10 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5

Ranga