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Oracle® Business Rules User's Guide 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) B15986-01 |
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# A Oracle Business Rules Files and Limitations

This appendix lists known naming constraints for Rule Author files and names, and certain Rules SDK limitations.

## A.1 Rule Author Naming Conventions

This section covers Rule Author naming conventions.

### A.1.1 Ruleset Naming

Rule Author enforces a limitation for rule set names; a rule set name can only contain the characters (a-zA-Z) and numbers (0-9), or an underscore character (_).

### A.1.2 Dictionary Naming

Rule Author dictionary names can contain both upper and lowercase letters (a-zA-Z), numbers (0-9), periods (.), underscore characters (_), and hyphens (-). Special characters are not valid in a dictionary name.

Rule Author dictionary names are case preserving but case insensitive. This means that the dictionary names "Dictionary" and "DICT" are both valid. This also means that if you create a dictionary named "Test," then you can only create another dictionary named "TEST" if you first delete the dictionary named "Test."

Additionally, dictionary names must contain at least one letter. For example, the dictionary name "1.1" is not valid, but "Version1.1" is valid.

### A.1.3 Version Naming

Rule Author enforces a limitation for the name of a version; a version name can only contain the characters (a-zA-Z), numbers (0-9), or an underscore character (_). Special characters are not valid in a version name.

Rule Author version names are case preserving but case insensitive. This means that the version names `Version` and `VERS` are both valid. This also means that if you create a version named `Test`, then you can only create another version named `TEST` if you first delete the version named `Test`.

### A.1.4 Alias Naming

A Rule Author alias can contain any characters, including a single space. When using an alias in an expression, if the alias begins with a letter, $, or _ and contains only letters, $, _, numbers, and spaces, it does not have to be quoted.

When using an alias containing special characters or embedded spaces in an advanced expression, the alias must be quoted with `'` (backquote) characters. For example, the alias `Driver@` must be specified as:

    'Driver@'

### A.1.5 XML Schema Target Package Naming

The Target Package Name that you specify for an XMLFact, on the XML Schema Selector page is limited to ASCII characters, digits and the underscore character.

## A.2 Rule Author Session Timeout

You should save the dictionary periodically as you work since Rule Author sessions expire after a period of inactivity specified in the Rule Author application's `web.xml` file using the `<session-timeout>` element.

## A.3 Rules SDK and Rule Author Temporary Files

When working with the Rules SDK or with Rule Author using the file repository, the Rules SDK uses temporary files. Under normal operating conditions, the Rules SDK removes these files from the system when an operation that uses the temporary file completes. It is possible, due to certain abnormal termination conditions for these temporary files to be left on the system.

See Section B.3, "Working with a File Repository" for more information about file repositories and temporary files.