I did something similar a while back, and was equally annoyed, as it seemed as if I’d have to write a helper class to perform simple functions. After some digging, I found an alternative.

You can directly reference the “mscorlib” under .NET Classes. This is the Common Object Runtime Library, and as it contains the System namespace, you have access to very useful objects like Convert, Math and String.

For string concatenation, you’d expand the String object, and drag the “Concat(String str0, String str1)” method across to your Conditions or Actions pane in the same way that you’d use the methods from a custom helper class.

But wait! There’s more!
Because “Concat(String str0, String str1)” is a static method, you don’t need to provide a fact creator to the BRE. In effect, you now have access to a host of utility functions out of the box for free (provided you’re calling static methods).

Hope that you guys find this useful and that it saves you time.

for these kinds of “defaulting”, “lookups”, “concat” etc. could a map on the inbound port not be a better solution?
i agree a map isn’t the best place for very complicated rules processing, but simple stuff like this works well in a map … and it has a Concat functoid out the box

Does that help?

Could you elaborate a bit more on how you set up the DB lookup ?

I know it is slightly off the topic but do you know if and how I can package this onto a applicaion using deployment framework. Also, am I allowed to do that from a licencing perspective(since it is your code)

regards,
PS