[news.eclipse.technology.ecp] Re: JSR-94 Rules Engine API

[Denis Robert <dtrobert@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You're right in regard to Jess. It's a proprietary product and can't be 
easily integrated because of this. Its license is a little on the 
complex side. On the other hand, I've personally integrated Drools (Now 
JBossRules) into OSGi with little difficulty.

Wendell Beckwith wrote:
> This spec, http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=94, details the minimum 
> standard spec for a Java Rules Engine.  Rules engines are complex beasts 
> and I personally hate them, but others think they're better than sliced 
> bread.  There are many use cases for them but one I'm familiar with is 
> "Class of Service".  A lot of businesses group their customers into 
> different 'classes' (right or wrong this is just what they do).  For a 
> customer who buys a lot of @#$$^ from you on a monthly basis may get a 
> better class of service than Joe Blow who only orders $10 every six 
> months.  So you set a discount rule that if you spend over $50,000/month 
> the previous month then you get 25% all orders in the current month.  
> You can also set a rule where if it is a new account then you will 
> automatically give a 10% discount on the 1st order.  You go on and on 
> creating these Rules.  What makes rules engines so attractive, to some 
> people, is the idea that they can be manipulated by "Business" people 
> without having to involved developers to create and (un)deploy new 
> rules, etc.  Of course if you aren't careful you can create rules that 
> run into conflict.
>
> As for rules engines, I believe http://drools.codehaus.org/ and Jess are 
> names I have heard of.  Although I seem to remember something not really 
> compatible about the Jess license/code.
>
>
> Wendell