|
EDISON, NJ --
March 29, 2008 --
OpenRules, Inc.
announced today the availability of a new major release OpenRules-5.
By introducing new
Rule Templates OpenRules Release
5.0 essentially simplifies rules repository construction and management and
expedites initialization of the OpenRulesEngine. Rule Templates
allow a rule designer to completely hide implementation details from
business analysts and reuse them without copying.
"The latest
OpenRules advances allow us to dramatically minimize the size of our rules repository. Rule templates become a blessing for our
complex patent processing rules that have to support data streams from more
than 80 different
countries," said Rex Bosma, a project manager at European Patent Office (EPO)
where OpenRules-5 has been already applied.
While the new rules
templatization mechanism is simple and intuitive
it brings enormous advantages from the business rules management perspective:
 |
Write once use many times
 | Write
rules for one state or country and then use them as a template
for all other states/countries |
| Changes in
the implementation of a rule template are automatically propagated to all rule tables
that extend this template |
|
|
Complete separation of business
and technical views
| Business
people have less to learn (and to be afraid of) |
| Technical
people have more freedom in rule templates design and
maintenance not being afraid to scare their business counterparts by
complexity of rules implementation logic |
| By placing
rule templates and rule tables in separate files you may
essentially simplify authorization control and who-does-what
assignments
|
|
| Rules
repository becomes smaller and easy to maintain
| Templates
allow to avoid a "paste-copy" approach by minimizing the total
amount of code and the size of rule tables |
| While
preserving the same structure changes in the templates and rules
could be done independently
|
|
|
Expedited initialization of
OpenRulesEngine
| Use of rule templates not only minimizes the
total size of rule repositories but contain much less code to be
interpreted when OpenRulesEngine downloads all rules for the
first time |
| Based on the size and design of the existing
rules repositories the gain in the initialization time could
vary from 2 to 5 times
|
|
|
Libraries of
rule templates specific for different lines of business
| An ability to create OpenRules template libraries
may allow leading organizations in different industries to
implement already established business standards such as
ACORD for
insurances or
MISMO for mortgages as a set of Excel-based templates. Even if the
library implementers prefers to use their own business models
initially they always may change the templates implementation later
on without changing the business rules themselves |
| A similar model will work well for OpenRules
OEMs who may define and maintain their rule template libraries
in accordance with their latest business object models
|
|
|
Non-intrusive
approach
| Rule templates are regular rule tables that
were always used in OpenRules repositories. They may include
concrete rules and be executed as usual |
| All rules repositories created before
OpenRules-5 will continue to work without problems (just a
little bit more efficiently) |
|
The release Note
for OpenRules 5.0 could be found here.
OpenRules 5.0
includes a sample project "HelloJavaTemplates" that demonstrate
the use of new features. The web site
www.openrules.com as well as the
online User's Guide have been modified to reflect
the changes introduced by OpenRules-5.
About
OpenRules
OpenRules, Inc. is a NJ-based corporation
that develops, supports and provides consulting services around Open Source
Business Rule Management System commonly known as OpenRules®. For details, please visit
http://www.openrules.com.
OpenRules is a registered trademark
of OpenRules, Inc. All other trademarks are the properties of their
respective owners.
|
