Database Integration  

1. Accessing data located in relational databases.
   We provided additional classes (such as DatabaseIterator) to the standard package "com.openrules.tools" that simplify a database access.   There are two new sample projects "HelloCustomerDB" and "DecisionPatientTherapyDB" that demonstrate how to get different data records (customers, patients) from a database and process them through OpenRulesEngine or Decision. See a new tutorial "DecisionPatientTherapyDB".

2. Creating and maintaining rules in relational databases.
   We extended OpenRulesEngine API to allow a user programmatically to setup all database properties without necessity to define Excel or any other configuration files. This feature is especially important when a user wants to use OpenRules^® within its db-centric environment as an extension of SQL. In particular, deploying decision services in OJVM (Java Virtual Machine in the Oracle Database) requires that all of their resources be available via the Java classpath. The standard OpenRules installation now includes a special sample project "RulesRepositoryPureDB" that demonstrate this feature.
   We provided a new document "Database Integration Guide" describes in detail the existing database protocols such as "db:" and "dbv:" that allow a user to move their decision logic (rules) from Excel to database Blob objects. 

Decision as a Web Service

We created a new document "OpenRules Web Services" that describes in detail how to deploy an OpenRules project as a web service. The standard installation now includes two sample projects "DecisionHelloWSCustomer" and  "DecisionHelloWSCustomerClient" that demonstrate how to create and test a web decision service.  The sample projects "HelloWS" and "HelloWSCustomer" demonstrate how to deploy basic rule projects with automatic generation of Java interfaces.

New Decision Table Operators

Based on customer requests we added several new operators to the decision tables:
- Compound assignment operators such as "+=" (assign plus), "+=" (assign minus), "*=" (assign multiply), and "/=" (assign divide). These operators allow rules to modify existing values of decision variables using decision table conclusions. For example, a conclusion for the variable "Score" may have  an operator "+=" with a value "2.5". If this rule is satisfied, the Score will be increased by 2.5.

- Along with conditional operator "Include", that checks if an array includes all values from another array, now you can use an operator "Does Not Include".

Finding Multiple and Optimal Solutions

The enhanced Rule Solver now supports all three problem resolution modes:

- Find one solution

- Find all solutions

- Find optimal solution.

You may check out enhanced and new samples in DecisionXYZ and DecisionEmployeeScheduling.

We have enhanced the product's documentation. The User Manual is more compact now: we moved such topics as External Rules and Database Integration to separate manuals. A new manual for Web Decision Services has been added.

As always, the new release remains backward compatible. You may download the latest OpenRules^® release 6.2.1 from www.openrules.com/download.htm. After the download, you need to update the folder "openrules.config". If you already have a previous installation you need to do the following:

- delete all openrules.config/*.xls files and replace them with new xls-files

- replace openrules.config/lib/openrules.all.jar with a new one.

Please post your comments and suggestions to the Google Discussion Group or send them to support@openrules.com.