Introduction Professional Edition

Overview

ARulesXL rulesets are developed and maintained in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. They use data from spreadsheet cells as inputs and return results as spreadsheet cell values. The ARulesXL Application Programming Interface (API) allows you to run rulesets in a variety of languages and tools. The API lets you load inputs from whatever data sources your application needs (e.g. databases, users, networks), and query the ruleset to obtain results. You can display those results in your application's user interface or in Web pages. You can also use the results programmatically to create schedules, orders, analyses, recommendations and more.

The API is also available from with Excel in VBA. This allows you to create more sophisticated applications that run entirely within Excel.

Implementation

The API is implemented as a class in most environments. The class has methods to open and close rulesets, load data and issue queries. Most of the methods are common across environments, although language specific methods are provided to use language-specific data collections, arrays, etc.

The API is currently available as a:

• Runtime-Only Excel Add-In
• C# and VB.NET Class
• Delphi Component
• Java Class
• Extend/MODL Extension
• VBA/VB6 Interface

The general methods are described under the API Reference and each environment has it's own chapter to discuss its installation, usage and language specific methods.

Samples are also provided for each environment.

Exporting and Using Rulesets

In order to run a ruleset in another environment, first you need to export it from Excel. To do this:

1. Open the spreadsheet in Excel containing the rulesets you want to run.
2. Select 'Export' from the ARulesXL menu and save the .axl file in a directory for your new application..

To run that ruleset in another environment these are the general steps. Specific steps are documented under each environment.

1. Copy the ARulesXL engine files from your Microsoft Office library directory (see the Installation Instructions) to the directory containing your application:
   1. arules.dll
   2. arules.xpl
   3. arules.cfg
2. Copy the environment specific files to your application directory and add them to your application as described under each environment.
3. In your application call OpenRules with pathname to the .axl file exported above.
4. Call methods to clear and then add data to objects, rulesets and vectors.
5. Call a query method to get results.
6. Call CloseRules to clean-up the ARulesXL engine.

Note, you need to use the same ARulesXL engine files to run your ruleset that you used when you exported it from Excel. In other words, if you upgrade to a newer version of ARulesXL and export new rulesets make sure to update the ARulesXL engine files.

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