Drools Solver solves planning problems. The problem is that developers can’t seem to find it when they are looking for a library to help with their problems, such as nurse rostering, bin packaging, course scheduling, … Only when someone tells them what Drools Solver does, they react with “yes, that’s what I am looking for”.
According to wikipedia, a Solver is a software tool for ‘solving’ mathematical systems of equations.
- Drools Solver is specifically designed for planning problems, so the term “solver” is too broad.
- It’s not equations based, but score rules based (which is more developer friendly).
- It’s confusing with the Excel solver or openoffice.org solver, which do solve equations.
So Solver is not the best name.
So I propose to rename it to “Drools Planner”.
- Pro:
- “Planning problem” is the only common name I can think of for its use cases.
- A good meme could be “Drools Planner optimizes your resources.”
- Against:
- Maven dependencies change from drools-solver to drools-planner
- Need to replace all imports (but that will be clearly documented in UpgradeFromPreviousVersionRecipe.txt).
Do you think it’s a good idea to rename “Drools Solver” to “Drools Planner”?
Or maybe you can think of a better name?
