Why should you use a Rule Engine in your business?

Efficient and Scalable

Rule engines are a great way to collect complex decision-making logic and work with data sets too large for humans to effectively use. A rule engine can make decisions based on hundreds of thousands of facts, quickly, reliably and repeatedly. It works by decomposing large sets of rules into a very efficient network of nodes which can process and react to facts far more efficiently than can be programmed manually. A Rule engine scales extremely well, almost linearly, with increases in rules and facts

Improve Productivity and Maintainability

In business, the extremely complex interplay of hundreds or even hundreds of thousands of rules operating on tens of thousands of concurrent facts can influence the outcome of important decisions. Those decisions can be difficult or impossible to program using procedural or imperative programming techniques. Rule based approaches lend themselves very well to Declarative Programming techniques and allow for data/logic separation; where business rules "bubble" to the surface making it very obvious what it does, not how it does it, thus making it easier to manage extremely complex decision making processes. The development of Domain Specific Languages allow developers to encapsulate logic from a specific, narrowly-scoped problem domain and use it to increase your development productivity.

Knowledge Transfer and Centralized Knowledge Repositories

Rule engines facilitate knowledge-transfer to centralized repositories and helps combat issues due to the loss of key decision makers, managers, executives, specialists and highly creative employees from 'normal' turnover rates and aging populations. This loss of knowledge can cripple small businesses, and seriously hamper the efforts of medium sized companies or divisions of large companies.

Customized Products and Services

Rule engines can dramatically improve your ability to put knowledge resources to use in subtle ways. Rules can help you customize your product and service offerings for customers and partners on an individual basis, and they can be used to centralize the behavioural or "executive" logic of your commercial applications, allowing you to quickly tailor them to the demands of ever-changing markets.

Books and Other Resources

There are many, many reasons you should learn about rules and about rule engines in general. Most of these principles can be found in Principles of the Business Rule Approach by Ronald G. Ross. Additionally, check our list of interesting Publications.