Drools JBoss Rules 5.0
Developer's Guide
Develop rules-based business logic using the
Drools platform
Michal Bali
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
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Drools JBoss Rules 5.0 Developer's Guide
Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing
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First published: July 2009
Production Reference: 1060709
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
32 Lincoln Road
Olton
Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.
ISBN 978-1-847195-64-7
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (vinayak.chittar@gmail.com)
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Mauricio Esquenazi on 21st July 2009
10 Kenmare St. #4, , New York, , 10012
Download at Boykma.Com
Credits
Author
Michal Bali
Reviewers
James Taylor
Sammy Larbi
Acquisition Editor
Sarah Cullington
Development Editor
Siddharth Mangarole
Technical Editors
Aanchal Kumar
Conrad Sardinha
Indexer
Rekha Nair
Editorial Team Leader
Gagandeep Singh
Project Team Leader
Priya Mukherji
Project Coordinator
Zainab Bagasrawala
Proofreader
Claire Lane
Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Mauricio Esquenazi on 21st July 2009
10 Kenmare St. #4, , New York, , 10012
Download at Boykma.Com
Foreword
Open Source Decision Management
Companies of every size are realizing that smart, simple, agile processes require
that operational decisions should be managed, automated, and improved.
These high volume transactional decisions must be made to keep data owing
through processes, to empower customers to self-serve, to make systems act more
intelligently. As Neil Raden and I discussed in Smart (Enough) Systems, these
decisions commonly have distinct characteristics. These decisions are high volume,
low latency, and necessary for both straight through processing and unattended
operation so they must be automated. Yet they must also change in response to
external variability, demonstrate compliance, manage risk, and be personalized
so traditional approaches to automation are problematic. Coding decisions in Java
makes it hard to show those decisions to a regulator to prove compliance and hard
to change the decision making approach quickly and cheaply. It makes it hard for
business users to truly collaborate on how these decisions should be made, limiting
the ability to bring risk management and personalization to these decisions.
Fortunately, there exists a technology and an approach to deal with these
challenges. Instead of using traditional approaches companies attacking the
decisions as a separate problem and managing those decisions explicitly. Decision
management externalizes these decisions as decision services so they can reused and
systematically improved. Decision management replaces traditional procedural code
with business rules—declarative, atomic, manageable fragments of business logic.
Business rules allow business users to participate in writing business logic.
With Drools 5, JBoss and the open source community have delivered a true business
rules management system for the rst time. Using Drools, organizations can take
control of the logic that drives their operational decisions. They can build simpler,
smarter, and more agile business processes and systems.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Mauricio Esquenazi on 21st July 2009
10 Kenmare St. #4, , New York, , 10012
Download at Boykma.Com
Michal introduces business rules and JBoss Drools to programmers in this book,
walking them through all the major features of the product. Extensive code extracts
and worked examples illustrate all the major, and many of the minor, features in the
new release. Whether you are new to Drools or used to a previous version, Michal's
book will help you navigate the new release. With Drools 5 you can take control of
the logic in your systems and manage your decisions for better business results and
greater agility, and this book will show you how.
It's time to change the way you build system, time to manage operational decisions,
time to put business rules to work.
James Taylor
CEO, Decision Management Solutions
Author, with Neil Raden, of Smart (Enough) Systems (Prentice Hall, 2007)
blog: jtonedm.com, twitter: jamet123
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Mauricio Esquenazi on 21st July 2009
10 Kenmare St. #4, , New York, , 10012
Download at Boykma.Com