Tutorial: Embedded rule management with Operational Decision Manager

This tutorial explains how to use the enterprise capabilities of Operational Decision Manager to manage rule projects from an application that uses Business Rules Embedded.

Business Rules Embedded comes with a number of rule editing components. You can use the components and the embedded rule APIs to create rules that can be executed as part of an application. You can find these editing components in the xRules and wRules samples, and the web authoring application.

When working with a host application, application users can do most of their rule development in these embedded authoring components. However, these editors do not have as many features as the editors in Operational Decision Manager Rule Designer and Decision Center. The Operational Decision Manager editors provide features that are not available in the SDK editors:

• Ruleflow management
• Versioning
• Simplified rule management that incorporates social media communication

It is possible to take advantage of these more powerful editors by exporting embedded rules as rulesets or rule projects to more advanced Operational Decision Manager components. The applications and samples that use Business Rules Embedded include export functionality that packages these embedded rules as compressed rule projects that can be imported into Rule Designer, which can then deploy the rules to Decision Center. Under certain conditions, it is also possible to import rule projects directly into Decision Center.

Developers can use the familiar Eclipse development environment of Rule Designer to perform more complex rule development operations such as:

• Define variables
• Customizing vocabulary
• Modifying ruleflows

Decision Center has the advantage of providing a web-based development environment that business application users can access directly through their web browsers.

The Decision Center offers two consoles: Enterprise and Business. The Enterprise console provides many of the tools developers need to manage rules:

• Synchronization with Rule Designer
• Deployment of Rule Docs for Rule Solutions for Office
• Ruleflow management for defining the decision process

The Business console offers a rule development environment for nontechnical application users. The console provides an easy-to-use rule management system that includes simplified editors for action rules and decision tables. To involve business application users directly in the management of embedded rules, deploy your embedded rules to Decision Center.