In business, a lot of actions are trigged by rules: "Order more ice cream when the stock is below 100 units and temperature is above 25° C", "Approve credit card application when the credit background check is OK, past relationship with the customer is profitable, and identity is confirmed", and so on. Traditional computer programming languages make it difficult to translate this "natural language" into a software program. But JBoss Rules (also known as Drools) enables anybody with basic IT skills and an understanding of the business to turn statements such as these into running computer code.

This book will teach you to specify business rules using JBoss Drools, and then put them into action in your business. You will be able to create rules that trigger actions and decisions, based on data that comes from a variety of sources and departments right across your business. Regardless of the size of your business, you can make your processes more effective and manageable by adopting JBoss Rules.

Banks use business rules to process your mortgage (home loan) application, and to manage the process through each step (initial indication of amount available, actual application, approval of the total according to strict rules regarding the amount of income, house value, previous repayment record, swapping title deeds, and so on).

Countries such as Australia apply business rules to visa applications (when you want to go and live there)--you get points for your age, whether you have a degree or masters, your occupation, any family members in the country, and a variety of other factors.

Supermarkets apply business rules to what stock they should have on their shelves and where--this depends upon analyzing factors such as how much shelf space there is, what location the supermarket is in, what people have bought the week before, the weather forecast for next week (for example, ice cream in hot weather), and what discounts the manufacturers are giving.

This book shows how you can use similar rules and processes in your business or organization. It begins with a detailed, clear explanation of business rules and how JBoss Rules supports them.

You will then see how to install and get to grips with the essential software required to use JBoss Rules. Once you have mastered the basic tools, you will learn how to build practical and effective of the business rule systems.

The book provides clear explanations of business rule jargon. You will learn how to work with Decision Tables, Domain-Specifi c Languages (DSL)s, the Guvnor and JBoss Integrated Development Environment (IDE), workflow and much more.

By the end of the book you will know exactly how to harness the power of JBoss Rules in your business.

What you will learn from this book?

* Understand the basics of business rules and JBoss rules with minimal effort
* Install the required software easily and learn to use the Guvnor, which is a user-friendly web editor that's also powerful enough to test our rules as we write them
* Learn to write sophisticated rules and import the fact model into the Guvnor and then build a guided rule around it, which makes your web pages a lot clearer
* Gain complete knowledge of what we can do with the Guvnor rule editor, and then use the JBoss IDE as an even more powerful way of writing rules, and automate processes for discounts, orders, sales, and more
* Know the structure of the rule file through the example of a shipping schedule, which will help you with your own shipping schedule
* Test your rules not only in the Guvnor, but also using FIT for rule testing against requirements documents; run unit tests using JUnit for error-free rules and interruption-free services
* Specifically, non-developers can work with Excel spreadsheets as a fact model to develop business processes without learning any other new technology
* Work with DSLs (Domain-Specific Languages) and rule flow to make writing rules easy; which makes staff training quicker and your working life easier
* Deploy your business rules to the real world, which completes your project successfully, and combine this into a web project using the framework of your choice to provide better services
* Benefit from concepts such as truth maintenance, conflict resolution, pattern matching rules agenda, and the Rete algorithm to provide advanced and faster business systems so that staff efficiency is maximized

Approach

This book takes a practical approach, with step-by-step instructions. It doesn't hesitate to talk about the technologies, but takes time to explain them (to an Excel power-user level). There is a good use of graphics and code where necessary.

Who this book is written for?

If you are a business analyst - somebody involved with enterprise IT but at a high level, understanding problems and planning solutions, rather than coding in-depth implementations - then this book is for you.

If you are a business user who needs to write rules, or a technical person who needs to support rules, this book is for you.

If you are looking for an introduction to rule engine technology, this book will satisfy your needs.

If you are a business user and want to write rules using Guvnor/JBoss IDE, this book will be suitable for you.

This book will also suit your need if you are a business user and want to understand what Drools can do and how it works, but would rather leave the implementation to a developer.