To design a business rule application, you create a rule project in Rule Designer and then export a ruleset to execute the rules.
To develop a business rule application with Rule Designer, you create a rule project that contains rule artifacts, Business Object Model (BOM), vocabulary, and reference to the execution object model (XOM). From that rule project you export a ruleset, which is an executable rule container that corresponds to a decision.
A rule project is a type of Eclipse project that you use to logically manage, build, and debug the items that comprise the business logic of your application.
In a rule project, you define a structure for your rule artifacts and set up the business object model (BOM) and vocabulary for editing these rule artifacts. You can manage rule project items in a source code control system.
You set up a rule project using a rule project template. You can use a standard, predefined, or custom rule project template.
A standard rule project includes:
Rule artifacts, comprising:
Action rules
Decision tables
Decision trees
Technical rules
Ruleflows
Functions
Variables
BOM entries that define the structure of a BOM, its associated vocabulary, and BOM to XOM mapping
Queries, to search through your workspace for rule artifacts that meet the search criteria you specify
Resources, which are any type of file that is not part of the rule model
Action rule templates, which are partially written action rules that you use as a basis to create rules with a similar structure
Optionally, a rule project may also contain rule model extension files. However, these files are not linked to a specific rule project and are used for all the rule projects in the workspace.
If you use a custom rule template to set up a rule project, the rule project contains elements for the plug-in you have selected. For example, for a Java™ project this might include:
A source folder (src)
A JRE system library
Plug-in dependencies
Icons
Meta information
The rule project is the item that you publish to Decision Center. If you want to manage and track your rules in Decision Center, in the New Project wizard select Rule Project from Decision Center rather than Rule Project.
Rules relating to a given decision are organized for execution and stored in a ruleset archive. A ruleset archive is a standalone, executable container that corresponds to a decision. It contains a set of rule artifacts for execution by the rule engine.
A ruleset archive contains a technical language version of the rules and rule artifacts and all the supporting data necessary to execute a ruleset. These include the business rules, functions, and ruleflows as well as the supporting business object model (BOM) and execution object model (XOM) files.
In the case of the decision engine the rules in the ruleset archive are already compiled to executable code.