The new OpenRules Decision Manager 8.3.0 along with “Decision Model Explorer“ includes an ability to define some decision variables by using formulas directly in the Glossary. For instance, in the standard sample “PatientTherapy” we can modify the glossary as follows:
OpenRules team worked hard to prepare a nice New Year gift for our customers and today I am glad to announce OpenRules Decision Model Explorer! Click HERE to see how it looks.
Yes, it is a Graphical Integrated Decision Modeling Environment that includes automatically built Diagrams (DRDs) for business decision models!
OpenRules Decision Manager deploys decision models as cloud-based decision services such as AWS Lambda with “one-click“. In this post I will explain how to invoke deployed OpenRules services from any Java application. There are at least 3 options:
You can try to run all three options using the sample decision project “VacationDaysLambda” included in the standard OpenRules installation. Continue reading
Many popular languages (e.g. Angular or Mustache) use text interpolation to incorporate dynamic string values into the text. OpenRules Decision Manager Release 8.2.1 gives our customers an option to use text interpolation by putting text decision variables in the double curly braces {{ and }}. For example, see how it’s being used in the standard sample project “PatientTherapy”:
Today ProcessMaker and OpenRules announced a new partnership that provides our customers with an integrated business process and decision management solution. The partnership adds high performance decision services created in OpenRules and deployed as AWS Lambdas to business applications built with ProcessMaker. It unlocks a powerful new level of sophistication for process, workflow, and business rules designers around the globe. This webinar demonstrates an implementation of a loan origination process in ProcessMaker that utilizes complex decision services built in OpenRules. Read Press Release.
Traditionally, Business Rule Engines do not communicate with databases directly and expect to receive input and provide output via intermediate objects defined in Java, JSON, or XML. However, our customers frequently prefer to use business-friendly rules defined in Excel instead of separately defined SQL statements. Our new product “Rule DB” does exactly this. In this post I will describe how it works using the MySQL Sample Database. Continue reading
OpenRules provides business users with abilities to build and deploy operational decision microservices. Now we empowered business users with an ability to assemble new decision services by orchestrating existing decision services independently of how they were built and deployed. The service orchestration logic is a business logic too, so it’s only natural to apply the decision modeling approach to orchestration. In this post I will explain how to orchestrate different services by creating a special orchestration decision model that describes under which conditions such services should be invoked and how to react to their execution results.
The DMC Challenge Sep-2020 deals with compression of decision tables trying to replace relatively large decision tables with “almost” equivalent but smaller decision tables. It is only natural to apply Machine Learning to this problem as it allows us to automatically discover business rules from the sets of labeled historical data records. So, I decided to use the open source Rule Learner to address this problem. In this post I will describe how I approached this problem with these implementation steps:
Today I presented “Rule Learner: Self-Learning Decision Models” at the DecisionCAMP Monthly Meeting. It’s about an integrated use of Machine Learning (ML) and Business Rules (BR) within Digital Decisioning Platforms. It describes how “RuleLearner.com” can help business analysts to discover business rules from large historical data sets. Without forcing business analysts to become experts in data science or programming, Rule Learner discovers business rules by naturally incorporating ML algorithms into Business Decision Models. The session focuses on practical aspects of rules generation by developing ever-learning decision-making applications. Video Slides
In this post I will describe how to use just published Rule Learner to solve the DMCommunity Jan-2019 Challenge. Cyber police has these images of Unfriendly and Friendly Robots:
Rule Learner should discover rules that classify any robots as friendly or unfriendly. Continue reading
OpenRules, Inc. was among first BR vendors who introduced the integrated Machine Learning and Business Rules approach back in 2007. Over the years, our Rule Learner was successfully used to discover business rules by analyzing large sets of historical data in different problem domains. One of the first success came in the large IRS project “The integrated use of BR+ML technologies” – read more.
Today we introduced a new version of Rule Learner publicly available as an open source product under the terms of the LGPL (it means no restrictions for commercial use!). You can download it for free from RuleLearner.com. It naturally integrates Machine Learning (ML) and Business Rules (BR) techniques by incorporating ML algorithms into rules-based Decision Models. Continue reading
While DMN-like decision tables are powerful enough to represent business logic for many practical problems, in real-world our customers frequently define new types of decision tables that are specific for their business domains. For example, years ago OpenRules was chosen for a large project that in particular dealt with spatial business rules. Their customers,, suppliers, and operations vary by region, and distance between then affected their decisions. They already used a Geospatial Information System (GIS) in order to explore spatial relationships that leveraged the industry standard Java Topology Suite (JTS) with a powerful Java API.
However, they wanted their business (!) users to natively define and maintain complex spatial rules without becoming experts in specific Java API. This 2014 presentation describes how OpenRules helped this customer to create a Spatial Decision Table template allowing stakeholders with no GIS training to use plain English in familiar Decision Model spreadsheets to define spatially aware business rules without any additional software. Continue reading
At DecisionCAMP-2020 we had a lot of discussions about the orchestration of the decision services and how to invoke different decision services when states of the business objects change over time. One of the most popular orchestration technique is a Pub/Sub architecture with State machines. The Challenge “Dynamic Loan Approval” is an example of perpetually running decision-making applications which should be able to learn from already executed transactions and evaluate new facts as they become available. This post describes how we implemented this application utilizing OpenRules-based GUI connected to AWS Lambda, EventBridge, SNS, and SQS. Continue reading
On June 30 I will present “Developing Decision Optimization Microservices for Real-World Decision-Making Applications” at DecisionCAMP-2020. Preparing my presentation, I thought about the major points I want to make. Of course, first of all, I want to demonstrate how to develop optimization services, but I also want to stress how the proposed approach helps to bring already great optimization tools into the everyday reality of business application development. Continue reading
There are already 3 solutions to DMCommunity May-2020 Challenge. I especially like how Carol-Ann Berlioz created her solution using a test-driven approach when test cases prompt her which rules should be added. So, I’ve tried to reproduce her solution but instead of a product specific GUI I decided to use OpenRules decision tables defined in Excel. So, here are our test-cases with input data and expected results: Continue reading
On June 15 OpenRules, Inc. released OpenRules Decision Manager 8.2.0 that summarizes major advances made in the first half of 2020 in the following areas: Continue reading
Let’s look how the release 8.2.0 enhanced OpenRules testing capabilities by extending tables of the type “DecisionTest” with new columns:
(You may click on this table to enlarge)
Continue reading
Traditionally when we ran an OpenRules-based decision model using a script “test.bat”, a user received an execution protocol on the console view, a “black” screen. While it showed all executed rules, it still was difficult for a user to find all changes especially when there are too many rules. The latest release of OpenRules Decision Manager essentially beatifies rules execution protocols and reports showing all rules in a hierarchical order and highlighting the variables which values that were actually changed. Continue reading
OpenRules decision tables use to column of the type “ActionExecute” to invoke another decision table by simply using its name. For example, look at this decision table:
Recently OpenRules, Inc. registered the domain “DecisionMicroservices.com“. Why did we do it? Because OpenRules Decision Manager dramatically simplifies the creation and maintenance of Operational Decision Microservices! Since we made the first SaaS Rule Engine available in AWS Marketplace on March 3, we experience a strong increase in the number of downloads and requests from the existing customers and prospects who want to develop their domain-specific Decision Microservices. Continue reading
Our customers deploy OpenRules decision services using multiple cloud-based microservices, on premise servers, or smartphone apps. Multiple production instances can be too expensive and our customers want to have a clear pricing model for as many decision services as they want to maintain independently how these services are being deployed. We listened and came up with a new pricing model that consists of two license types, Development License and Run-Time License:
Continue reading
For years OpenRules was among the fastest rule engines. When last year we moved from run-time interpretation to design-time code generation, we, like our colleagues at Red Hat Drools, managed to further improve the overall performance and provide support for practical decision microservices. As a result, we dramatically minimized start-up time, went from 50-100 milliseconds per transaction to 5-10 milliseconds, made memory footprint small. These are really good results needed by modern enterprise decision-making systems.
However, I knew that we have multi-year customers that use really big (!) decision tables with 10 and even 30 thousands of rules. How to improve their performance? Continue reading
Congratulations to our development team and our customers!
OpenRules Decision Manager 8.1.2 is out and it comes with two big good news:
PERFORMANCE UP. Now OpenRules supports a new type of decision tables called “BigTable“. It’s created for decision tables with thousands of rules, and such big tables will be executed 10-100 times faster! The new execution mechanism is based on a self-balancing binary search algorithm and shows a fantastic speed improvement: decision tables with more than 20,000 rules are being evaluated within 1 millisecond! Try it yourself by clicking on this link. It will execute this big decision table deployed as AWS Lambda.
COST DOWN. Our customers deploy OpenRules decision services using multiple cloud-based microservices or smartphone apps that cannot be expensive. We listened and decided to cut run-time license fee 10 times! Now our customers using only one development license may create and deploy hundreds of decision services and still pay a very low cost:
Last week I created a “Worker Planner” that has a nice GUI deployed on Apache Tomcat and it works in sync with a remote Scheduling Decision Service deployed as AWS Lambda. The scheduling service was implemented with JavaSolver and a constraint solver included into JSR331. My objective was to demonstrate that these days with cloud-based deployment it is not so difficult to create an end-to-end full-scale decision optimization service. I also wanted to show how to apply powerful Linear Solvers to crack traditionally complex production scheduling problems. So, two days ago I took a well-known problem that is described in this example: Continue reading
There are already several good responses to the DMCommunity’s April-2020 Challenge “Doctor Planning”. Below I am describing how I tried to use this challenge to create a complete decision optimization service. I ended up with a working Worker Scheduler that shows a solution for this particular challenge in Fig. 1 (click to open):
OpenRules offers two open source products to support an integrated use of “Business Decision Modeling with Rule Engines and CP/LP Solvers“:
In this post I will describe how you can deploy decision optimization models as AWS Decision Microservices without programming or complex configuration. Continue reading
In these uncertain times, to do our part we want to help US businesses, especially health organizations to quickly make important operational decisions. OpenRules offers immediate assistance in creation and deployment of your decisions services on-cloud or on-premise.
Contact us at support@openrules.com and we will setup a call to discuss how we can be in help. As the CTO at OpenRules, I’d allocate my personal time to help you with your urgent decision automation problems for free – email me directly at jacobfeldman@openrules.com.
You may find many ways to configure an AWS EC2 Instance and deploy an executable jar-file to this instance. To configure an AWS EC2 Instance you should go through several steps including setting up secured access. In this post we will describe a simplified way how to quickly:
OpenRules business decision models can be deployed as a RESTful web service with a single click effectively utilizing SpringBoot and Maven – read how to do it here. In this post we will describe how you can package a business decision model into an executable JAR-file that can be deployed on the local server and tested from POSTMAN or Java. Continue reading
OpenRules business decision models can be deployed as operational decision services utilizing the Serverless architecture provided by AWS. Deploying your decision models as AWS Lambda functions you don’t even think about servers and pay only for the execution time your services actually consume. Continue reading
OpenRules Decision Manager takes an Excel-based business decision model and converts it into highly efficient Java code. When you make changes to the business model, the code will be automatically re-generated, so we do not expect you to even look at this code. The authors of business decision models will always maintain their original models using mainly Excel.
OpenRules Decision Manager offers several integration and deployment facilities for converting your business decision models to operational decision services on-premise or on-cloud. We want you to be able to go through the deployment process without programming or complex configuration. This process should be easily repeatable as you will need to do it again and again when you modify your original business decision models. So, we tried to simplify the deployment process as much as possible. As our customers started to explore different deployment options, we plan to post several articles that describe these options in more details using the standard examples included into the OpenRules Decision Manager 8.1.1 installation.
This month OpenRules Decision Manager became the first SaaS Rule Engine available in AWS Marketplace. It gives our customers an opportunity to execute OpenRules-based decision services using a “Pay-As-You-Go” pricing model. You may read the Press Release approved by the AWS Marketplace team. Using your AWS account, you can now subscribe to our AWS SaaS Subscription that allows you to pay a minimal fee for only what you actually use with all charges coming from Amazon AWS Marketplace. Continue reading
DMCommunity’s Jan-2020 challenge “Nim Rules” offers to find a winning strategy for this game: “There is a number of red balls in the row below (it could be 15, 16, or 17 balls). Two players take turns removing balls from the row, but only 1, 2 or 3 balls at a time. The player who removes the last ball loses.”
People play different versions of the Nim game since ancient times. First time I played this game with 15 parrots against a clown at a children’s party when I was 7. Later on during my first university’s year my math professor challenged me to play this game instead of answering my exam questions. Continue reading
OpenRules Release 8.1.0 essentially enhances both OpenRules Decision Manager and classic OpenRules BRDMS making them faster and easier to integrate with any existing applications.
OpenRules Decision Manager 8.1.0 along with further improved performance includes the following improvements: Continue reading
OpenRules Decision Manager can be deployed a business decision models as a RESTful web service that accepts HTTP requests at your local or remote server and produces with proper responses in the JSON format. As usual, you create and test your decision model in Excel and then simply add the property “spring.boot=On” to the file “project.properties”. Then you only need to double-click on the provide file “runLocalServer.bat” (the same for all models). Continue reading
FocalCXM became our partner. Over the last few years, they have been able to solve complex Decision Modeling problems by using OpenRules Rule and Decision Engines. By integrating Enterprise CRM platforms such as Salesforce, Veeva etc with the OpenRules Engine, they managed to roll out highly compliant loyalty programs and simplify sales and marketing processes in the Life Sciences industry. This partnership will empower companies solve various other use cases related to Compliance, Employee and Customer Experiences.
OpenRules Decision Manager 8.1.0 supports regression testing to confirm that a recent change has not adversely affected existing features of multiple decision models. Regression testing is done to make sure that new changes should not have side effects on the existing functionalities. It ensures that the old functionality still works once the new changes in decision models are done. Continue reading
OpenRules Decision Manager 8.1.0 includes a special Rule Debugger that allows business users to debug their decision models while they are being executed. The debugger stops execution after executing the first selected rule and a user can analyze the current content of all decision variables to understand why certain rules were executed or skipped. After pushing “Enter” the next selected rule will be executed. A user may continue to push “Enter” until all rules are executed. Continue reading
2019 has brought lots of innovations and positive developments for OpenRules and its customers. This post summarizes all the new capabilities and user experiences that we have introduced in 2019. Continue reading
OpenRules always was among the fastest decision execution engines. Our newest OpenRules Decision Manager was designed to provide super-fast performance for modern enterprise decision-making applications that handle millions of rules-based transactions per day and to naturally support cloud-based microservices. Now we started to receive a very positive feedback from our customers: after switching to the newest OpenRules Decision Manager the same decision models show 6-10 times performance improvement! If you decide to switch as well, you may take advantage of our Migration Services.
DMCommunity.org Challenge Nov-2019 asks us to build numerical versions of traditional Japanese haiku poems. Here is an example of a traditional Haiku poem:
(5) The sky is so blue.
(7) The sun is so warm up high.
(5) I love the summer.
A haiku poem consists of three-lines written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Here is an example of a numerical haiku:
77 [seventy seven has 5 syllables]
+ 123 [one hundred twenty three has 6 syllables + 1 syllable for “plus”]
= 200 [two hundred has 3 syllables + 2 syllables for “equals”]
Nathan Brixius proposed a solution using the open-source constraint package written in Python. I really like this problem and decided to ponder this challenge with a free open-sourced JavaSolver. Below is my solution for numerical Haiku and Tanka. Continue reading
There are two major types of decision engines utilized by different Business Rules and Decision Management systems to execute business decision models:
1. Traditional rule engines (RETE-based or Sequential).
2. Constraint-based rule engines Continue reading
Problem
The DMCommunity Challenge Apr-2019 “Recreational Fee” is based on the following problem provided by Ron Ross:
A city has created a decision table to determine appropriate usage fees for its recreational facilities based on length of usage and when the usage occurs:
DecisionCAMP-2019 in beautiful Bolzano on Sep. 17-19 will go down in history as one of the most successful DecisionCAMPs. As usual, it was packed with interesting presentations and even more interesting formal and informal discussions. I’ve written my notes from this memorable event – read them here.
OpenRules business decision models can be deployed as operational decision services utilizing the Serverless architecture provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the most powerful and popular cloud platform in the modern world. When you deploy your decision models as AWS Lambda functions, you don’t even think about servers and pay only for the execution time your services actually consume. Continue reading
The Sep-2019 DMC Challenge “CrackTheCode” is a simple puzzle. We need to crack a 3 digit code based on these hints:
682 – one number is correct and in the correct position
645 – one number is correct but in the wrong position
206 – two numbers are correct but in the wrong positions
738 – nothing is correct
780 – one number is correct but in the wrong position. Continue reading
Nowadays it’s not enough for decision-making applications to simply execute a complex rules-based transaction, forget about it, and wait for the next one. These applications frequently have to maintain states of the business objects they manage and and based on their states invoke different decision services. Orchestration of the decision services becomes a serious issue but different implementation techniques frequently utilize State machines. In this post we will use the DMCommunity Aug-2019 Challenge to demonstrate how it can be done. Continue reading
Nowadays rules-based business decision models are usually developed and maintained by business analysts or other subject matter experts (not by software developers). And more and more people want to make their business decision models available from cloud as operational decision services. But is it possible for non-technical people to achieve this objective? There are so many new terms and concepts to learn, that it seems doubtful for business people to handle this task. Continue reading
Business decision models are usually developed and maintained by business analysts or other subject matter experts (not software developers). In the modern world the authors of these decision models want to make them available from cloud as operational decision services. But how difficult is to achieve this objective? Continue reading
