Category Decision Management

Feb 11 2012

Modeling Decisions for Scheduling and Resource Allocation Problems

“Reality is built in wonderful simplicity”, Eliyahu Goldratt “The Choice”

Scheduling and Resource Allocation are traditionally considered as very complex business problems. They are usually out of reach for the most rule engines.  I personally learned how to deal with these complex problems during my real-world consulting practice by applying a great product called “ILOG Scheduler” written by Claude LePape and Jean-Francois Puget 20 years ago. I’ve just googled the product name and got this User Manual that has over 600 pages with a lot of C++ code. I used to teach ILOG Solver/Scheduler courses and will reuse some examples borrowed from them. Continue reading →

Jan 2 2012

Different Decision Tables for a Very Simple Use Case

The responses to the RFP of OMG  DMN (Decision Model and Notation) standard are scheduled to arrive in May of 2012. Trying to keep this process as close as possible to the everyday decision management reality, I posted several use cases at the DMN Discussion Group and tried to formulate down-to-earth questions that DMN will hopefully address. Here I want to take almost trivial rules and discuss different implementation options using decision tables. Continue reading →

Nov 7 2011

Representing and Solving Rule-Based Decision Models with Constraint Solvers

The latest rules conferences RulesFest-2011, BBC-2011, and RuleML-2011 were really great events in general and for OpenRules in particular. We announced a new constraint-based Rule Engine that is the first alternative to Rete-based implementations of a real inferencial rule engine. Continue reading →

May 12 2011

About OpenRules Scalability

Being in real-world production environment for many years, OpenRules Engine has a proven record of high efficiency and scalability. Several years ago some of our customers (a major European bank and a large government agency) assigned teams of people to do stress-testing of our product before they decided to use it instead of commercial counter-parts. The results were really good. Continue reading →

Jan 17 2011

Connecting The Dots

On January 8, 2010 after the notorious “underwear bomber” attack Tom Davenport wrote:

“How easy is it to connect the dots? Granted, there were numerous indications of Abdul Mutallab’s evil intent. But it would have been difficult to put them together before the flight. Combining disparate pieces of information about people – whether they are customers or terrorists – is akin to solving a complex jigsaw puzzle.” Continue reading →