Rule Action Side Effects
If the execution of an action affects the state of an object or a term used in conditions, that action is considered to have a side effect on the object.
Assume we have the following rules.
Rule 1
IF OrderForm.ItemCount > 100
THEN OrderForm.Status = "important"
Rule 2
IF OrderList.IsFromMember = true
THEN OrderForm.UpdateStatus("important")
In this case, OrderForm.UpdateStatus is said to have a side effect on OrderForm.Status. This does not mean that OrderForm.UpdateStatus has side effects; instead, OrderForm.Status is potentially affected by one or more actions.
By default, the SideEffects property for .NET class members is true, which prevents the rule engine from caching the member with side effects. In our example, the rule engine does not cache OrderForm.Status in the working memory; instead it gets the most up-to-date value of OrderForm.Status every time Rule 1 is evaluated. If the SideEffects property is set to false, the rule engine caches the value first time it evaluates OrderForm.Status, but for later evaluations (in forward-chaining scenarios), it uses the cached value.
Currently the Business Rule Composer does not provide a way for users to modify SideEffects, however, you can only set the SideEffects property programmatically through the Business Rules Framework. You set do this at binding, using the ClassMemberBinding class to specify object methods, properties, and fields used in rule conditions and actions. ClassMemberBinding has a property, SideEffects, which contains a Boolean value indicating whether accessing the member changes its value.