Reporting on differences between Rulesheet versions
Two versions of a Rulesheet can have modest changes, yet it can be difficult to see all the differences during a visual inspection of the two Rulesheets. Reporting on differences between Rulesheets provides help in debugging mistaken rule changes, and inconsistent rule definitions. For example:
Diagnosing a Ruletest failure - When a Ruletest fails because of changes in newer Rulesheets, you can use Rulesheet difference reports to determine what changed, and then make changes to a Rulesheet to fix bad rules, or to indicate changes to make to your Ruletest expected results.
Resolving merge conflicts - When using a source control system such as git, you may encounter situations where you want to commit a Rulesheet that someone else has changed, and discover a merge conflict. Using Rulesheet difference analysis and reports, you can see what has changed and decide how to manually merge the differences so you can commit your changes.
With one Rulesheet in the editor, choosing the menu command Compare Rulesheets initiates the dialog as illustrated:
The analysis is not simply a text file comparison of the source files -- it is a comparison operation that takes the list of objects in each Rulesheet, and then maps them to find matching criteria unique to specific objects in the input lists. Sets of matching criteria by context are found, and the output is a mapping of matched objects, and notation of unique 'extra' objects.
Diagnosing a Ruletest failure - When a Ruletest fails because of changes in newer Rulesheets, you can use Rulesheet difference reports to determine what changed, and then make changes to a Rulesheet to fix bad rules, or to indicate changes to make to your Ruletest expected results.