Clash of the Java rule titans

Blaze Advisor vs. JRules

By James Owen, InfoWorld

July 17, 2006— We're all familiar with the conventional relationship between the business department and IT: The business department needs a new application or they need to change an existing application. They approach IT and ask how long it will take and how much it will cost. If within budget, IT gathers what it calls requirements and, after approval of the requirements, begins coding. Then comes the testing, changes, finger-pointing, backroom dealing, and more finger-pointing. In technical terms, IT has responsibility for both the validation of the application (Did we build the right system?) and the verification requirements (Did we build it properly?).

A BRMS (business rule management system) isolates the pure business logic of a project from the control logic and presentation code and puts it into a rule base space. Effectively, a BRMS moves verification back to the business department where it belongs. Using a BRMS, the business user, not the IT department, writes the rules, changes the rules, and deletes the rules. The IT department is responsible for the construction of the system so that it is fast, scalable, and easily maintainable.

Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor and ILOG's JRules are the longtime leaders in enterprise BRMS. JRules has always played catch-up to Blaze Advisor on rule building and management, but has led Blaze in speed. Now, as each reach version 6, JRules has some advantages in rule management and Blaze Advisor has turned on the after-burners, surpassing JRules in performance. I have finally compared these two solutions head-to-head, ringing all the bells and blowing all the whistles. I also ran the Waltz DB benchmarks on both rule engines for speed comparisons.

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Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity Using YASU Technologies QuickRules.Net 3.0 BRMS: "Reduce Costs and Increase Productivity Using YASU Technologies QuickRules.Net 3.0 BRMS




YASU Technologies announces the release of QuickRules.NET 3.0 BRMS.
(PRWEB) July 14, 2006 -- YASU Technologies, a provider of innovative cross-platform BRM solutions for Java/J2EE and .NET technologies, today announced the availability of the QuickRules.NET 3.0 BRMS. This version of its QuickRules.NET BRMS platform has been designed with a number of feature additions and enhancements that make business rule management faster and more intuitive.

'The introduction of FlowRulesets and integration with the industry standard MS-Office� means that the QuickRules.NET 3.0 BRMS offers significant improvement in usability and productivity over previous releases of the platform. The product team is constantly striving towards helping enterprises rule-enable their biggest and most complex systems, and we believe that we have come a long way in achieving that aim with this release,' says Rajagopalan N, Product Manager, QuickRules.NET 3.0 BRMS."

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SDA Asia Magazine::Interviews::Implementing BRMS? Think Big, Start Small, Deploy Incrementally: "Implementing BRMS? Think Big, Start Small, Deploy Incrementally
By Sophia Mayengbam



Business rules are simple statements expressing a policy or condition that governs business actions. Frequently, these rules are hard-coded in business software where they can not be accessed easily, meaning companies can�t respond as quickly to changes in their business. A Business Rules Management System (BRMS) is a platform for managing rules � it is not the same business rule engine technology of 20 years ago, which were hard to use and just focused on execution. The new breed of Business Rules Management System (BRMS) is designed to address the needs of all the constituents in the business rule lifecycle � from developers, to IT to system administrators and business users. SDA Asia's Sophia Mayengbam spoke to Foo Jong Tong, General Manager, ILOG Asia Pacific, to understand the importance of BRMS in businesses and the best ways to implement it."

RuleBurst Launches Innovative, Natural Language Business Rule Authoring for Microsoft� BizTalk� Server: "RuleBurst� Launches Innovative, Natural Language Business Rule Authoring for Microsoft� BizTalk� Server




RuleBurst Limited, the industry leader in business rule capture and analysis, today launched its advanced business rules authoring for Microsoft BizTalk Server.
Boston, MA (PRWEB) July 12, 2006 -- Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference---RuleBurst Limited, the industry leader in business rule capture and analysis, today launched its advanced business rules authoring for Microsoft BizTalk Server. The event occurred at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Boston. RuleBurst now allows information workers---business and policy experts---to develop complex business rules for BizTalk Server using familiar Microsoft Office tools. BizTalk Server rules can now be written in natural language in Microsoft Office Word, intuitive flow diagrams in Microsoft Office Visio and sophisticated decision tables in Microsoft Office Excel."

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blackboxIT and RuleBurst Announce Reseller Relationship to Combine Legacy Modernisation and Natural Language Business Rules: "blackboxIT and RuleBurst Announce Reseller Relationship to Combine Legacy Modernisation and Natural Language Business Rules


This partnership will provide a more agile and cost effective solution for organisations requiring a modern and agile business rules approach to IT development, whilst leveraging their existing investments in legacy mainframe systems.
England (PRWEB) July 10 2006 -- blackboxIT, a leading supplier of software to identify business rules in legacy COBOL code, today announced a preferred reseller partnership with RuleBurst, a leader in rule articulation and deployment. This partnership will provide a more agile and cost effective solution for organisations requiring a modern and agile business rules approach to IT development, whilst leveraging their existing investments in legacy mainframe systems.

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Exclusive: Corticon plays by different rules InfoWorld Review 2006-07-07 By James Owen: "Exclusive: Corticon plays by different rules
Spreadsheet-like alternative to traditional rule builders aces development


By James Owen
July 07, 2006


Dr. Mark Allen of Corticon caused quite a ruckus several years ago when he published a paper called �Rete is Wrong,� which took all of the rule-based engines based on the Rete (pronounced Ree-tee) algorithm to task for inefficiencies and poor construction. Allen explained that, in contrast to the Rete engines in market-leading BRMS (Business Rules Management Systems) such as ILOG�s JRules and Fair Isaac�s Blaze Advisor, Corticon had a DETI (Design-Time Inferencing, pronounced Dee-Tee) engine. "

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......................
The Business Rules Community's
Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update
July, 2006 Vol 7 No. 7
.......................
In this issue of your periodic Business Rules Journal Update...
1. Moving from Zachman Row 2 to Zachman Row 3 ~ Business Rules from
an SBVR and an xUML Perspective (Part 2), by Markus Schacher
2 Premise & Conclusion: The Dirty Secrets About Your Company's
Business IP That Nobody Wants to Talk About, by Ronald G. Ross
3. Best Practices of Process Management: The Top Ten Principles
(Part 7), by Roger T. Burlton
4. Foundation Matters: Semijoin and Semidifference: Doing Things
by Halves Can Sometimes Be a Good Idea,by C. J. Date
5. In the Know: More on Knowledge Capture, by Bonnie O'Neil
If you'd like to read all our articles on the web, visit:
http://www.brcommunity.com


1. Moving from Zachman Row 2 to Zachman Row 3 ~ Business Rules from
an SBVR and an xUML Perspective (Part 2), by Markus Schacher ...............................................................
During the past few years, Markus Schacher and his colleagues at KnowGravity have been involved in research on the Business Rules Approach (BRA), as well as in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) of the Object Management Group (OMG). In this context they have developed an environment for creating executable UML models, also called xUML models. In this, the second of a short series of articles, Markus discusses how derivation rules can be represented in SBVR as well as in xUML.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2006/b292b.html

2. Premise & Conclusion: The Dirty Secrets About Your Company's
Business IP That Nobody Wants to Talk About, by Ronald G. Ross ...............................................................
A company's intellectual property (IP) is its very lifeblood, yet many seem clueless about how to manage that IP as a business proposition.
This dangerous reality often becomes apparent only when the business comes face-to-face with the inevitable (and usually urgent) need to re-platform. In this month's column, Ron Ross reveals the dirty secrets about re-platforming business IP that every manager should know.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2006/b300.html

3. Best Practices of Process Management: The Top Ten Principles
(Part 7), by Roger T. Burlton
...............................................................
Years of successful and not-so-successful process management experience have led to a set of best practices -- a number of fundamental principles that must be honored in order to optimize returns to the company, the delivery of business results to customers, and to satisfy the needs of the organization’s other stakeholders. In this series, Roger Burlton outlines the ten principles that underlie the methods of business process operation and change. In this month's column, he discusses the seventh principle.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2006/b302.html

4. Foundation Matters: Semijoin and Semidifference: Doing Things
by Halves Can Sometimes Be a Good Idea,by C. J. Date ...............................................................
C.J. Date observes that not many people are familiar with the relational operators semijoin and semidifference. He feels that is a shame and, in this month's column, he shows how those operators can be extremely useful in practice.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2006/b298.html

5. In the Know: More on Knowledge Capture, by Bonnie O'Neil ...............................................................
"It seems I have hit upon something very interesting to a lot of people in my last column on Knowledge Capture," Bonnie O'Neil reports. In this month's "In the Know" column, Bonnie O'Neil shares more on the subject of knowledge capture.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2006/b301.html


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
How to stay in touch with Business Rules ...
**ABOUT THE BUSINESS RULES JOURNAL UPDATE**
The Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update is distributed electronically
free-of-charge on a monthly basis by the Business Rules Community.
www.BRCommunity.com

BRCommunity.com is sponsored by Business Rule Solutions, LLC, the world
leader in business rule techniques.
Copyright 2006. www.BRSolutions.com. All rights reserved.

http://opensource.sys-con.com/read/243226.htm: "Fair Isaac Expands Globally With Localization Of Java Supported Blaze Advisor System
Business Rules Management Technology Offered In French, German, Spanish, Brazilian And Japanese
By: Enterprise Open Source News Desk
Jul. 3, 2006 01:00 AM
Digg This!


Fair Isaac Corporation announced that version 6.1 of its award-winning Blaze Advisor business rules management system is now available in five languages, in addition to English. Businesses worldwide can now develop and deploy business rules using interfaces and data represented in French, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese.

The localization of the Blaze Advisor system accelerates and simplifies strategy execution with enterprise business rules to help businesses reach new levels of agility in an increasingly complex, competitive and regulated global economy. Building upon a tradition of bringing innovative capabilities to the rules market, the system demonstrates Fair Isaac's continued investment in and commitment to enterprise decision management both domestically and abroad.

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