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OpenRules Overview
What is OpenRules
Business Rules ApproachEXCEL is the most popular tool used by Business Analysts today!
ECLIPSE is the most popular IDE used by Software Developers today!
What is OpenRules
OpenRules, Inc. offers methodology, proven open source tools and services that enable business analysts to work in concert with software developers to create and maintain Rules-based Web applications with complex business and presentation logic.
(click on any block in the picture to learn more)
OpenRules® is a full-scale Business Rules Management System (BRMS). It provides a suite of open source components for Rules-based Web Application Development. It is based on commonly used tools such as MS Excel, Eclipse IDE and different Open Source Libraries.
OpenRules® is designed to facilitate involvement of business people in the rules development and maintenance processes; it offers the power of BRMS without sacrificing simplicity. With OpenRules you can create simple or complex decision support systems that maintain and efficiently execute hundreds, tens-of-thousands or even more business rules. In conjunction with commonly used tools, OpenRules supports an enterprise-class Business Rules Repository. OpenRules can be integrated with, or used along side virtually any J2EE/J2SE or .NET application - from the smallest stand-alone Java application to the largest e-commerce system. OpenRules components are designed to be easy to use right out of the box. They capitalize on users' familiarity with popular tools, and are completely compatible with the developer expertise that already exists for Java and Microsoft products.
Business Rules Approach
If you want to put your business analysts (not programmers) in control of the complex business logic of your mission-critical applications, you probably have already committed to the Business Rules Approach. You are probably familiar with a sound BR Methodology and leading commercial business rule engines such as ILOG or Blaze. Now you want to configure a Business Rules Management System (BRMS) that fits your own specific needs in the best way while, at the same time, minimize license fees, software integration expenses, and the learning curve of your specialists.
Dynamic Interaction Processes ►top
Your applications are highly interactive, and you wonder:
How will the business rules approach help to define intelligent dialogs with complex web-based forms?
Will a new system be able to construct dynamic interaction processes on the fly using the interaction history and information already available from the existing system?
You want your business specialists to be able to easily modify different web forms without learning multiple GUI development techniques. Most importantly, you need reliable proven tools and methodology to redefine and maintain frequently changing business logic of your complex interaction processes. You may find examples of highly interactive business processes and the proposed solutions within this presentation.
Tools ►top
To address these problems, one has to find answers to at least two questions:
1) What is the most popular tool used by Business Analysts today?
2) What is the most popular Integrated Development Environment (IDE) used by Software Developers today?Below are OpenRules answers.
EXCEL is the most popular tool used by Business Analysts today! ►top
Excel as a Rule Editor. Business analysts usually use MS Office tools such as MS Excel™ or Word™ to present business rules. Most rule engine vendors provide proprietary "Excel-like" tools for rules administration. Thus, after selecting any commercial BRMS, you still have to map your Excel tables into a new environment. Why not use MS Excel directly as your business rules management tool? After all, it is the de-facto standard that provides a familiar user interface with thousands of powerful features and it does not commit your personnel to a lengthy learning curve. With free Open Source Tools available from OpenRules, your business analysts can create, modify, and execute business rules directly in Excel!
Excel as a Form Editor. To create and support Web interfaces most companies have to rely on IT specialists because they use such technologies such as HTML, JScript, JSP/ASP, PHP, etc. Why not use MS Excel directly as your Web Form management tool? With free Open Source Tools available from OpenRules, your business analysts can create Web Forms directly in Excel! These tools allow a non-technical user to define complex web form layouts and the associated interaction logic in simple Excel tables. Forms drawn in MS Excel spreadsheets are automatically translated into HTML pages without limiting the expressiveness of HTML. Thus, without any need to learn a new formatting language or tool, a more experienced user can add any standard HTML tags and properties directly into Excel layouts in order to beatify the generated forms.
ECLIPSE is the most popular IDE used by Software Developers today! ►top
Despite a desire to minimize the role of IT, you do need professional software developers to assist business analysts in rule automation and to integrate business rules into the existing software infrastructure. Nowadays, free Open Source Eclipse IDE is the most powerful de-facto standard tool for software project management. With free Open Source Tools available from OpenRules your software developers can naturally integrate Excel-based business rules into their complex Eclipse projects. Using Eclipse, enables them to automatically inherit hundreds of powerful features from rules debugging to rules versioning and Web Service deployment. Additionally, they gain a natural access to hundreds of 3rd party Java tools!
Open Source Tools ►top
A Suite of Open Source Tools is available from OpenRules, Inc. ("Suite"). The Suite consists of a set of software tools/libraries for the development of Rules-based Web applications that employ complex business logic, but are controlled by business people. Together with MS Excel™ and Eclipse™, the Suite comprises a powerful development and management framework that supports the following functionality:
- Spreadsheet Management ►top
A software developer may specify different types of executable tables that can be defined directly in Excel spreadsheets. These table types include rule tables, datatype and data tables, form layout tables, tables that describe programming methods with snippets of Java code, and tables that configure an application specific development environment. While new table types can be added by professional software developers, non-technical people can create and maintain tables of the predefined type using only Excel. The Suite provides an interface with the Eclipse IDE that converts Excel spreadsheets into legitimate citizens of complex Java-based software development environments.- Decision Support Rules ►top
Both business and technical users can use Excel to specify business rules and their implementation details inside different decision tables. A decision table is a tabular representation of business rules used to describe and analyze decision situations where the state of a number of conditions determines the execution of a set of actions.- Web Form Management ►top
A non-technical user can implement dynamic web-based interaction processes by defining complex form layouts and interaction logic in simple Excel tables. Using Excel as a web form editor allows a user to define complex web page layouts in a WYSIWIG manner without knowledge of HTML, JScript, etc. If necessary, experts can always add more programming details directly into Excel-based forms and decision tables. OpenRules supports rules-based process modeling with a quick and intuitive GUI generation.- Data Modeling ►top
There is support for Intelligent Business Glossaries that define specific business terms and facts. A non-technical user can represent different data types directly in Excel and define objects of these types to be used as test data. At the same time, a business glossary can include data types specified outside Excel, for example in Java classes, in XML files, or in database tables.- Web Deployment ►top
There are three ways to deploy and integrate rules-based applications created with the Suite:
- as a Java method
- as a presentation-oriented Web application
- as a Web Service.
The Suite includes tools for automatic deployment of rule services using major web application servers. By default, the software comes pre-integrated with Apache Tomcat.
- Industry Specific Libraries ►top
The Suite provides an ability to define libraries of Excel spreadsheets, XML files, and Java classes that can be reused as templates for multiple applications across organizations or industries. The predefined spreadsheets include examples of data types for commonly used objects such as Customer, standard presentation layouts for common data elements such as Address or SSN, company specific style sheets, standard processing rules, calculation methods, and more.OpenRules relies only on free Open Source tools/libraries created and maintained by different Open Source contributors. OpenRules can be downloaded from here. The downloadable Open Source software includes copies of all related freely distributed 3rd party products in accordance with their Open Source licenses. The source code is available upon requests. OpenRules, Inc. stands behind all included tools with the best in Technical Support and related Consulting Services.
Why Open Source? ►top
All tools available from OpenRules, Inc. can be used by any company or individual without any license fee on an Open Source basis. Why? Because we believe that when a certain technology (like a rule engine or a GUI builder) becomes a commodity, it should no longer be priced like most commercial rule engines are priced today. Such tools-commodities should belong to Open Source: read more here or here. It is the knowledge of how to use these software commodities in real-world applications that becomes more and more valuable. That's why OpenRules, Inc. provides commercial Technical Support and related Consulting Services in conjunction with freely available Open Source software.
Summary
Combining Excel, Eclipse, and Open Source Tools, backed by OpenRules support, forms a practical framework for full-scale Business Rules Management and Web Application Development. OpenRules embodies an ingenious software architecture that maximizes customizability and is open to any integration solution. Extensive reuse of proven, commonly available software results in a framework that matches or exceeds similar commercial systems in speed, compactness, and ease of use.
