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White Paper
ILOG JRules: Leading the Way in Business Rule Management Systems
ILOG JRules: Leading the Way in Business Rule Management Systems White Paper
© ILOG, March 2005 – Do not duplicate without permission. ILOG, CPLEX and their respective logotypes are registered trademarks. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. The material presented in this document is summary in nature, subject to change, not contractual and intended for general information only and does not constitute a representation.
ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Contents Audience ................................................................................................................................ 4 Applicable ILOG JRules Versions....................................................................................... 4 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 5 The Five Strengths ................................................................................................................ 5 Strength 1: Comprehensive Feature Set............................................................................. 6 Tools................................................................................................................................... 6 Rule Languages ................................................................................................................ 7 Repository ......................................................................................................................... 8 BRE Server......................................................................................................................... 8 Rule Engine ....................................................................................................................... 9 Strength 2: Reliability ......................................................................................................... 10 Rule execution speed ..................................................................................................... 10 A Scalable BRMS ............................................................................................................ 11 Dedication to standards ................................................................................................ 11 Strength 3: Customizability and Extensibility ................................................................ 13 Customization services.................................................................................................. 13 Extension services .......................................................................................................... 13 Strength 4: Track Record.................................................................................................... 14 Stability of ILOG ............................................................................................................ 14 “Blue Chip” references .................................................................................................. 14 Growing customer base................................................................................................. 14 Strength 5: Complete Offering .......................................................................................... 15 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 15 Additional Resources ......................................................................................................... 15
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Audience This document is intended for those who wish to learn more about business rule management and business rule management systems, and to understand why JRules is the leading BRMS available.
Applicable ILOG JRules Versions This document covers ILOG JRules 5.0.x
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Introduction ILOG has worked for many years to make ILOG JRules the market-leading business rule management system (BRMS). JRules makes business rule management practical by providing innovative tools to author, deploy and manage business rules across the enterprise. This is why it has become an essential part of the IT infrastructures of hundreds of businesses worldwide, and the list of customers continues to grow with each passing quarter. ILOG JRules’ reputation has resulted in the BRMS’s inclusion in the SD Times 100 and the Crossroads A-List. It has received the Intelligent Enterprise Editor’s Choice Award and Software Development magazine’s Productivity Award, among other top industry honors. Major IT research firms recognize ILOG JRules as a market leader. Gartner has listed it in the Magic Quadrant for Business Rule Engines in every version of the Magic Quadrant, and Giga, Butler Group and Bloor Research all recommend ILOG JRules specifically for business rule management. IDC identifies ILOG as the overall leader in market share for the BRMS market. Why does ILOG JRules hold this commanding position among business rule management systems? Put simply, ILOG JRules has strengths that – taken together – are unsurpassed in the marketplace.
The Five Strengths ILOG JRules’ strengths begin with its comprehensive feature set. ILOG JRules provides tools and rule languages that help policy managers, business analysts and developers author, deploy and manage business rules. It also includes a repository to store and protect business rules, a powerful rule engine to execute rules, and an extensive Java library to define and extend rule execution and management environments. Another major strength is ILOG JRules reliability. The combination of high performance and robustness make the product’s rule engine the one to depend on with mission-critical business applications, regardless of the throughput requirements. All the components in ILOG JRules are based on the latest standards for J2EE, XML, Web services and even rule engines (e.g., JSR94). It is designed to fit into a modern computing environment seamlessly and efficiently, so there is no need for a custom or proprietary interface or adapter.
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
ILOG JRules is customizable and extensible to an unprecedented degree. Practically every feature provided “out of the box” can be customized. The tools, repository and engine are all supported with rich APIs, and frameworks that enable their extension programmatically. ILOG JRules has achieved an impressive track record over the last several years. A contributing factor is the stability of its maker -- ILOG --both from a financial and an organizational standpoint. There are also its blue-chip references. ILOG JRules is employed across the enterprise at leading companies around the world in finance, government, telecommunications, insurance, e-businesses and manufacturing. And this list is growing fast. ILOG JRules’ fifth major strength is its complete offering. ILOG JRules is not just software and documentation, although the software is award winning, and its documentation comprehensive and educational. ILOG provides maintenance services and technical support, classroom and onsite training, solution frameworks and product consulting. ILOG provides all the software and services needed to successfully apply business rule management.
Strength 1: Comprehensive Feature Set ILOG JRules provides tools and rule languages that help policy managers, business analysts and developers author, deploy, and manage business rules. It also includes a repository to store and protect business rules; a powerful rule engine to execute rules; and an extensive Java library to define and extend the rule execution and management environments. Each of these major component areas is rich with features.
Tools Feature Ruleflow Decision Table Editor Decision Table Designer Decision Tree Editor Decision Tree Designer Graphical Business Object Model Editor
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
Description Orchestrate the execution of rule packages using UML Author and maintain rules as decision tables Make templates for decision tables Author and maintain rules as decision trees Make templates for decision trees Diagram objects manipulated by rules using UML
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ILOG Business Rules
Consistency Checking Rule Validation Query Plug-In Architecture Repository Explorer Business Object Model Explorer Template Designer Template Editor Syntactic Rule Editor Web Rule Editor Property Sheet Profiler Debugger Tracer
ILOG JRules
Identify broken or redundant rules Automatically check rule syntax Search for and update anything in the repository Work with only the tools you need; hide the ones you don’t need Browse and select rules, templates, queries, decision tables, Ruleflow and more Browse and select objects manipulated by rules Create rule templates Author, read and update template-based rules Author, read and update rules on your desktop Author, read and update rules through a Web browser View and edit rule properties Evaluate the runtime performance of a rule set Debug rules, decision tables and Ruleflow as they are executed by the rule engine Monitor execution events as they occur
Rule Languages Feature Business Action Language (BAL) ILOG Rule Language (IRL) Business Rule Language Definition Framework Java Language Integration Temporal Expressions Internationalization
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
Description Author rules using natural language syntax Author rules using Java- or XML-like syntax Customize the provided rule languages or create your own Use Java expressions directly in the IRL Include time-based conditions and actions in rules Author rules in English, French, Japanese and other languages
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Repository Feature Rule Versioning Permission Management Rule History
Persistence
Locking SCC Integration
Description Assign versions to rules and decision tables Control access to rules and tools View the history of changes made to rules and rule properties Store rules, rule properties, decision tables, Ruleflow, templates and more in files or database management systems Automatically coordinate multiuser collaboration on rule authoring and management Use third-party SCC tools to store and retrieve repository artifacts
BRE Server Feature J2EE Components
Management
Builder Integration AS Integration
Remote Debugging JIT code generation Ruleset Persistence
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
Description Integrated suite of components for executing business rules on production J2EE application servers and databases. Web-based system administration console and Java Management Beans. Integration with Java Management Bean tools such as IBM Tivoli or HP OpenView. Hot-deployment and packaging of business rules from JRules Builder. Powerful integration with the underlying J2EE Application Server for cache management and configuration. Interactive, remote debugging of rulesets deployed to the BRES from Rule Builder Safe Just-In-Time generation of Java bytecode from rulesets RDBMS used to persist rulesets in
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ILOG Business Rules
Automation Tools
ILOG JRules
production Suite of automation tools for developers and system administrators to perform all major management tasks through scripts or application build files
Rule Engine Feature
Inferencing Execution Mode Sequential Execution Mode XML Binding Web Service Binding Database Binding Context Pooling Support for JSR94 Ruleset Update Management JIT Bytecode Generation Remote Debugging
Conflict Resolution Multithreaded Architecture Truth Maintenance System Temporal Reasoning Support for Ruleflow
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
Description Apply sophisticated pattern-matching algorithms to arbitrarily execute complex rule sets Maximize execution speed for simple rule sets Read and write XML files directly Invoke external Web services directly from rules Connection to DBMS facilitated Manage performance using pools of rule engines Call the JRule engine by using the JSR94 standard rule engine interface Update rule sets “on the fly” without restarting Boost performance by automatically translating rule sets into Java bytecode Enable remote connection of debugging tool for embedded application diagnosis Automatically resolve rule conflicts during execution by using refraction, priority and version Share objects across multiple threads Use logical objects to automatically assert and retract conditional hypotheses Incorporate time as a parameter during rule execution Execute Ruleflow and rules in the same engine
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Strength 2: Reliability Another primary reason why ILOG customers select ILOG JRules over other BRMSs is its reliability. The three aspects of reliability most cited are rule execution speed, rule engine robustness, and a dedication to industry standards apparent throughout the software.
Rule execution speed In a recent lab test, ILOG personnel measured the execution speed of the ILOG JRules rule engine. The rule set for the test consisted of 1,500 rules. Each rule used five conditions to assign one of five actions to a sales item, based on the characteristics of the item. A total of 10,000 sales items were included in the test. Three execution modes were run in the test: inferencing, inferencing with bytecode generation, and sequential. Rule execution by inferencing used the highly advanced RETE algorithm to efficiently match rule conditions to the sales items. During inferencing, all the rules were reactive to data change and became applicable when the conditions were verified. A rule selection strategy was used to select the rules to execute. Inferencing with bytecode generation added a just-in-time optimization step that translated test evaluations into efficient Java bytecode before execution. (Bytecode generation is an optional enhancement for the inferencing mode.) Sequential execution applied a brute-force approach to the rule evaluation. In this mode, rules were evaluated and executed in a predefined order, and the rule selection strategy was discarded. Usually, the characteristics of a rule set make it executable with either inferencing or sequential mode, but not both. In this case, the test rule set was designed so that both inferencing and sequential execution modes could be applied and compared. Execution Mode Inferencing Inferencing w/ bytecode generation Sequential
Execution Speed (rules per second) 22.7K 68.6K 384K
K = Thousand (Tests conducted on a Sun Blade 1000 running Solaris 8 with 1.5 GBytes of memory)
Running the test produced an execution speed of 22,700 rules per second for pure inferencing. Adding bytecode generation produced a 3X increase to 68,600 rules per
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
second. Switching to sequential mode increased performance enormously, to an execution speed of 384,000 rules per second.
A Scalable BRMS ILOG JRules is being successfully applied across business applications varying greatly in operating profile and performance requirements. This point is illustrated in the following table of examples taken from real deployments by ILOG JRules customers: Application Type Rules Operating Profile Straight Through Processing: Data 1K 2-2.5K orders/day, 2M Validation, Confirmation, Order rules/day Routing and Message Transformation Asset Management: Validation and 300 300K validations/hour Consolidation Credit Qualification 50 2.8K records/sec, 130K rules/sec Automatic Trading 30 15 rules/sec Automatic Trading 120 50 trades/sec Order Validation and Routing 60 2K orders/day Mediation Claim Assignment Welfare Benefit Eligibility Loan Acquisition and Servicing Claim Validation and Routing Transaction Validation and Routing Order Management Content Routing Automobile Financing Reservation Data cleansing K = Thousand M = Million
6K 450 300 200 360 8K 1.8K 15 100 1.6K
10M transactions/hour 225K claims/day >300 rules/sec 5M loans/day 0.25 claims/sec, 1M claims/month 120K transactions/day 20K transactions/day 150K-250K messages/day Up to 40K requests/day 16K reservations/day
ILOG JRules has been proven stable and reliable from proof of concept to deployment of mission-critical business applications operating in a 24x7x365 environments.
Dedication to standards ILOG JRules conforms to the current and emerging standards of the Object Management Group (OMG), Java Community Process (JCP) and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), for:
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
• • • • •
ILOG JRules
Repositories Rule engines XML Web services Web Rule Builder
Standards implemented by ILOG JRules include: Standard
Version
MOF
1.4
Standard source OMG
Standard type
XMI
1.1
OMG
Object model specification XML grammar
JMI JSR-94
1.0 1.0
JCP JCP
API API
Implemented in ILOG JRules by Business Object Model Repository file persistence Repository Model API Rule engine server
Standards supported by ILOG JRules include: Standard JDK
Version
Standard source JCP
Standard type API
Supported in ILOG JRules by All modules
JCP
API
Repository database persistence Rule engine EJB deployment Rule engine EJB deployment All XML parsers, XSLT invocation XML binding
JDBC
1.3.1, 1.4.1, 1.4.2 2.0
J2EE
1.3
JCP
API
EJB
1.1, 2.0
JCP
API
JAXP
1.1
JCP
API
XML Schema WSDL
1.0
W3C
1.1
W3C
XML grammar XML grammar
SOAP
1.1
W3C
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
XML
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Web service binding, Rule engine deployment Web service
ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
grammar
Servlet JSP CSS
2.2, 2.3 1.1, 1.2 2
JCP JCP W3C
API API Grammar
binding, Rule engine deployment Web Rule Builder Web Rule Builder Web Rule Builder look and feel
Strength 3: Customizability and Extensibility ILOG JRules provides mechanisms for customizing and extending all its components, including its tools, languages, repository and engine. The customization services make it easy to adjust the performance, functionality and appearance of components provided with ILOG JRules, while the extension services make it possible to add capabilities that are not provided by default with ILOG JRules.
Customization services ILOG JRules can be customized in several ways: • • •
Installing or uninstalling tools using a plug-in architecture Changing configuration properties Customizing the look and feel of ILOG JRules Web components via CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Extension services ILOG JRules can be extended in several ways: • • • • •
Adding a custom tool or function using the plug-in architecture Adding custom functionality via ILOG JRules Application Programming Interface Adding a custom business rule language Embedding ILOG JRules Web components in custom user interfaces Embedding ILOG JRules Java Beans in custom Java applications
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Strength 4: Track Record Stability of ILOG For more than 10 years, ILOGʹs innovative enterprise-class software components and services have helped companies maximize their business agility and improve operating efficiency. Over 1,000 global corporations and more than 300 leading software vendors rely on ILOGʹs business rule, optimization and visualization technologies to achieve dramatic returns on investment, create market-defining products and services, and sharpen their competitive edge. ILOG has had the same chief executive since the company’s inception, and its employee turnover rate is well below the industry average. For R&D in particular, it is well below 5 percent.
“Blue Chip” references Here are what CIOs of major companies have to say about ILOG JRules: “We selected ILOG JRules because of its rich user interface, and its business approach that puts the power of the customization in the user’s hands. The performance and scalability of ILOG JRules were other key reasons.” – Liz Shuttleworth, CIO, Radian Guaranty “Sometimes I walk out of my office and see a group of customers actively playing at a time that used to be slow. And I say to myself, they wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for the one-off promotions I can do with our rules system.” – Tim Stanley, CIO, Harrah’s Entertainment “Using ILOG JRules, we will have a solution that will scale as our business requirements change while supporting CitiStreetʹs need to exchange and manage employee information in real time.” - Andy Marsh, CIO, Total Benefits Outsourcing, CitiStreet
Growing customer base ILOG’s customer base for ILOG JRules has experienced double-digit growth in the last three years, with no letup in sight. It includes EBay, Freddie Mac, , Disney, Sabre and many other leading Global 2000 companies, and governments worldwide.
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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ILOG Business Rules
ILOG JRules
Strength 5: Complete Offering ILOG JRules includes more than just award-winning software and comprehensive, instructional documentation. It is also fully backed with maintenance and support services, classroom and onsite training, and solution frameworks and consulting from our professional services. Together, they add up to a complete solution for business rule management.
Conclusion ILOG JRules leads in the business rule management marketplace because of its strengths: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Comprehensive Feature Set Reliability Extensibility and Customizability Track Record Completeness of Offering
Taken together, these five strengths make ILOG JRules the right choice in BRMS.
Additional Resources More information on ILOG JRules, including datasheets, specifications, case studies and white papers, can be obtained from an ILOG Sales Representative near you or the ILOG JRules Web pages, at www.ilog.com/products/jrules.
© 2004 ILOG S.A. All rights reserved.
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