European Business Rules Conference 2004: The Business Rules Platform and Enterprise Integration

Internal ILOG Document 1

The Business Rules Platform and Enterprise Integration

ILOG, Inc.

Daniel [email protected]

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Who Are You?

• Product Manager, ILOG Business Rules• Enterprise Integration in general• Rule engine requirements• J2EE requirements• IBM zSeries requirements

• JSR-94 Specification Lead• BEA WebLogic Portal Architect

• Lead rule engine team for web personalization technology

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Agenda

• Enterprise scale challenges• Integration (BPM)• Enterprise BRMS• Integration Requirements

• Subject Matter Experts• Software Engineering Practices• Operations Support• Data Stores

• Conclusions

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Enterprise Challenges

• Integrating multiple systems• Dealing with scale• Vendor relationships• Change management• Mission critical systems• (Many) people and processes (incl. security)• Geography, culture, language• Hot-backup, Cold-backup• Staging, production process• Politics!

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Moving Beyond Quick Wins...

• Deep enterprise integration• Providing a strong platform for customers

and vendors to leverage• Parse and JIT 100,000 rules...• Evaluate 40,000 rules in 20 ms• Execute millions of rules per-day• “Bet my business technology...”• Professional services, support, maintenance

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Enterprise Architecture

• Rule engines are becoming an important component of enterprise architecture:

• Structural Logic => OR/ER models, source code• Fixed Business Logic => BPM, work flow• Variable Business Logic => Business Rules

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Moving to Mainstream

• “He who owns the compiler wins...”• Have to ease adoption of BR technology for IT• System Administrators are key• Have to understand enterprise challenges

and culture• Cannot impose solutions – have to be flexible

yet complete• Have to integrate

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Microsoft BizTalk

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BizTalk – Business Process

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BizTalk - Rule Engine

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BizTalk – Rule Editing

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IBM WBI – Business Process

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BEA WebLogic Workshop

Demo

ILOG JRules and BEA WLI

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Enterprise BRMS

Business Rule ManagementApplication Development

Deployment

RequirementsAnalysis

Development

Testing

DeveloperDeveloperBusiness AnalystBusiness Analyst

Sys AdminSys Admin

Testing

Deployment

Authoring

Business Rule Execution

Policy ManagerPolicy Manager

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Enterprise BRMS

• Enterprise BRMS supports:• All participants in the BRM life cycle• Large projects with large development teams• Rule maintenance by large, distributed policy

management teams• Rule sharing across multiple applications,

multiple platforms• Enterprise-class integration methods

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Integration Requirements

• People• Engineers, Subject Matter Experts, Policy

Managers...• Tools

• IDE, BPM tools, monitoring, authoring, reporting...• Processes

• Configurations, staging, deployment, testing, requirements, auditing, security, availability...

• Data• RDBMS, CRM, CICS, IMS, Tuxedo, XML...

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Subject Matter Experts

• Are not developers...!• Policy Managers• Easy to use (business) interface• Appropriate language and complexity• Collaboration features• Flexibility in organization• Access control• Work flow and approval cycles

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Engineering

• Processes: RUP, XP, Waterfall etcetera• Integrated Development Environment• System is composed of code and

configuration• Powerful version management: branches,

workspaces, differences and merging• Debugging• Profiling• Deployment

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BR Studio Developer Edition

Demo

ILOG Business Rule StudioDeveloper Edition

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Operations Support

• High-availability• Capacity planning• Monitoring and management• Alerts• Standard protocols: SNMP, JMX

etcetera• Standard tools: HP OpenView,

IBM Tivoli etcetera

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Integration Requirements

• Data Stores• Rule engine must process external data• Where is it coming from?

• Typically RDBMS tables or XML files• Often legacy data stores• Sometimes ERP or CRM systems• Sometimes Web Services

• Usually results are written to a persistent store• Transactional application• Auditing and logging

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Conclusions

• 2004 is an exciting time for business rules!• This is a hard problem: due to integration

issues not (just) technology or algorithms.• We must do a better job at communicating

how business rules integrate with traditional programming skills and roles.

See you at JavaOne 2004!

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References

• Rule Engines and J2EE: A Platform for Flexible Enterprise Applications:

• http://servlet.java.sun.com/javaone/sf2003/conf/sessions/display-1412.en.jsp

• Microsoft BizTalk:

• http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/

• IBM Business Performance Management:

• http://www-306.ibm.com/software/info/topic/perform/

• ILOG Business Rules Products

• http://www.ilog.com/products/businessrules/

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Questions and Discussion

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