Get answers from the top-ten questions asked in our recent ILOG Business Rule Buyer's Guide webinar series and answered by an ILOG BRMS expert.
- Can you compare the performance of a complex query from ILOG BRMS with native SQL? Do you have benchmarks for the extra time it takes, on average?
- Do you have references or case studies illustrating how clients use business rules for application lifecycle management (ALM) applications, as well as software and system development governance and compliance? For example, tasks like defining compliance rules for approving software development artifacts, rules for passing development milestones, or rules for software artifact consistency.
- How does ILOG handle rating rules?
- How does ILOG handle the separation of exposed rules accessible to business users versus those rules that require IT manipulation?
- How does ILOG BRMS conduct analyses to assess the impact of changes? Does ILOG use imported models from, for example, IBM WebSphere Business Modeler to model or highlight rule candidates?
- Is Java the only supported runtime environment ILOG BRMS supports? Is there a legacy application programming interface (API)?
- We believed our project needed ILOG BRMS. However, the enterprise wanted a corporate-wide tool. What is the usual process to do this? Does one department or project drive the purchase process, or does the enterprise usually make the decision?
- What databases do ILOG BRMS support? Does ILOG BRMS allow forward chaining?
- How much does it typically cost to install ILOG BRMS, and how many rules, on average, are included?
- How much does a Discovery Workshop cost?
Can you compare the performance of a complex query from ILOG BRMS with native SQL? Do you have benchmarks for the extra time it takes, on average?
Database queries which are invoked via rule execution perform similarly to any SQL queries executed from within standard application code. A good rule-application design may leverage the strengths of a relational persistence tool such as Hibernate, which provides performance enhancing capabilities, such as lazy lookup and smart caching, for example.
Do you have references or case studies illustrating how clients use business rules for application lifecycle management (ALM) applications, as well as software and system development governance and compliance? For example, tasks like defining compliance rules for approving software development artifacts, rules for passing development milestones, or rules for software artifact consistency.
We have a number of BRMS case studies for compliance applications (not specifically for ALM), including:
Anti-money laundering
Fraud detection
Pre- and post-trade compliance
Reference data management
Mediation
Service fulfillment and order validation
Governmental compensation
Regulation for financial markets, Patriot Act, HIPAA and Basel II
Get more information
How does ILOG handle rating rules?
Rating rules are often modeled in a decision table format, wherein a rating or grade is associated with a combination of inputs. The ILOG Scorecard module is applicable for advanced risk management decision logic, wherein the scorecard cells may contain score calculation functions.
Get an in-depth description of scorecard functionality.
How does ILOG handle the separation of exposed rules accessible to business users versus those rules that require IT manipulation?
ILOG BRMS provides separate rule authoring/management interfaces for developers (Rule Studio) and for business users (Rule Team Server). Rule Team Server provides a synchronization mechanism to allow collaborative rule development through both interfaces simultaneously.
How does ILOG BRMS conduct analyses to assess the impact of changes? Does ILOG use imported models from, for example, IBM WebSphere Business Modeler to model or highlight rule candidates?
ILOG BRMS supports both static impact analysis, wherein rule queries identify rules impacted by a proposed change (e.g., renaming a data element), and runtime impact analysis, wherein rule execution results can be compared to baseline or expected results.
ILOG can import industry standard data models into a business object model such as the ACORD XML schema for P&C insurance and the MISMO schema for mortgage lending.
Is Java the only supported runtime environment ILOG BRMS supports? Is there a legacy application programming interface (API)?
ILOG BRMS natively supports Java, .NET, and COBOL runtime environments. ILOG BRMS supports other runtime environments via Web services or other standard integration methods.
We believed our project needed ILOG BRMS. However, the enterprise wanted a corporate-wide tool. What is the usual process to do this? Does one department or project drive the purchase process, or does the enterprise usually make the decision?
The process varies. Sometimes the ILOG BRMS evaluation and selection process is an enterprise-architecture initiative, and other times it is driven by a specific project (the modernization of a core legacy system for billing or underwriting, for instance) with a need for rule management and rule processing.
What databases do ILOG BRMS support? Does ILOG BRMS allow forward chaining?
ILOG BRMS supports all Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)-compliant databases, including Oracle 9i/10g, DB2, SQL*Server, and Sybase.
ILOG BRMS supports multiple modes of rule execution for different types of rule processing, including forward-chaining inference (by default) and sequential (non-inferencing).
How much does it typically cost to install ILOG BRMS, and how many rules, on average, are included?
The cost of an ILOG BRMS installation varies on your deployment metrics (e.g., number of runtime server/CPUs). Please contact an ILOG account manager at 1 (800) FOR-ILOG (or at info@ilog.com) for detailed information about licensing options and costs.
A typical rule-based decision service may contain a few-hundred to a few-thousand rules.
