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

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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

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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.

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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
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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Consistency Checking Identify broken or redundant rules

Rule Validation Automatically check rule syntax
Search for and update anything in the
Query repository
Work with only the tools you need; hide
Plug-In Architecture the ones you don’t need
Browse and select rules, templates, queries,
Repository Explorer decision tables, Ruleflow and more
Browse and select objects manipulated by
Business Object Model Explorer rules
Template Designer Create rule templates
Author, read and update template-based
Template Editor rules
Author, read and update rules on your
Syntactic Rule Editor desktop
Author, read and update rules through a
Web Rule Editor Web browser
Property Sheet View and edit rule properties
Evaluate the runtime performance of a rule
Profiler set
Debug rules, decision tables and Ruleflow
Debugger as they are executed by the rule engine
Tracer 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
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 Description
Assign versions to rules and decision
Rule Versioning tables
Permission Management Control access to rules and tools
View the history of changes made to rules
Rule History and rule properties
Store rules, rule properties, decision tables,
Ruleflow, templates and more in files or
Persistence database management systems
Automatically coordinate multiuser
collaboration on rule authoring and
Locking management
Use third-party SCC tools to store and
SCC Integration retrieve repository artifacts

BRE Server

Feature Description
J2EE Components Integrated suite of components for
executing business rules on production
J2EE application servers and databases.
Management Web-based system administration console
and Java Management Beans. Integration
with Java Management Bean tools such as
IBM Tivoli or HP OpenView.
Builder Integration Hot-deployment and packaging of
business rules from JRules Builder.
AS Integration Powerful integration with the underlying
J2EE Application Server for cache
management and configuration.
Remote Debugging Interactive, remote debugging of rulesets
deployed to the BRES from Rule Builder
JIT code generation Safe Just-In-Time generation of Java byte-
code from rulesets
Ruleset Persistence RDBMS used to persist rulesets in

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ILOG Business Rules ILOG JRules

production
Automation Tools Suite of automation tools for developers
and system administrators to perform all
major management tasks through scripts
or application build files

Rule Engine

Feature Description
Apply sophisticated pattern-matching
algorithms to arbitrarily execute complex
Inferencing Execution Mode rule sets
Maximize execution speed for simple rule
Sequential Execution Mode sets
XML Binding Read and write XML files directly
Invoke external Web services directly from
Web Service Binding rules
Database Binding Connection to DBMS facilitated
Manage performance using pools of rule
Context Pooling engines
Call the JRule engine by using the JSR94
Support for JSR94 standard rule engine interface
Update rule sets “on the fly” without
Ruleset Update Management restarting
Boost performance by automatically
JIT Bytecode Generation translating rule sets into Java bytecode
Enable remote connection of debugging
Remote Debugging tool for embedded application diagnosis
Automatically resolve rule conflicts during
execution by using refraction, priority and
Conflict Resolution version
Multithreaded Architecture Share objects across multiple threads
Use logical objects to automatically assert
Truth Maintenance System and retract conditional hypotheses
Incorporate time as a parameter during
Temporal Reasoning rule execution
Execute Ruleflow and rules in the same
Support for Ruleflow engine

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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 Execution Speed (rules per second)

Inferencing 22.7K
Inferencing w/ bytecode generation 68.6K
Sequential 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

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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 6K 10M transactions/hour
Claim Assignment 450 225K claims/day
Welfare Benefit Eligibility 300 >300 rules/sec
Loan Acquisition and Servicing 200 5M loans/day
Claim Validation and Routing 360 0.25 claims/sec, 1M
claims/month
Transaction Validation and Routing 8K 120K transactions/day
Order Management 1.8K 20K transactions/day
Content Routing 15 150K-250K messages/day
Automobile Financing 100 Up to 40K requests/day
Reservation Data cleansing 1.6K 16K reservations/day
K = Thousand M = Million

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:

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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 Standard Standard type Implemented in ILOG

source JRules by
MOF 1.4 OMG Object model Business Object Model
specification
XMI 1.1 OMG XML grammar Repository file
persistence
JMI 1.0 JCP API Repository Model API
JSR-94 1.0 JCP API Rule engine server

Standards supported by ILOG JRules include:

Standard Version Standard Standard Supported in

source type ILOG JRules by
JDK 1.3.1, 1.4.1, JCP API All modules
1.4.2
JDBC 2.0 JCP API Repository
database
persistence
J2EE 1.3 JCP API Rule engine EJB
deployment
EJB 1.1, 2.0 JCP API Rule engine EJB
deployment
JAXP 1.1 JCP API All XML parsers,
XSLT invocation
XML 1.0 W3C XML XML binding
Schema grammar
WSDL 1.1 W3C XML Web service
grammar binding,
Rule engine
deployment
SOAP 1.1 W3C XML Web service

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grammar binding,
Rule engine
deployment
Servlet 2.2, 2.3 JCP API Web Rule Builder
JSP 1.1, 1.2 JCP API Web Rule Builder
CSS 2 W3C Grammar 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

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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.

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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. Comprehensive Feature Set

2. Reliability
3. Extensibility and Customizability
4. Track Record
5. 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.

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