Category OpenRules Specific

Feb 24 2018

Happy 15th Birthday, OpenRules!

Today is exactly 15 years since OpenRules, Inc. was incorporated on Feb. 24, 2003. It’s a quite serious milestone, so I decided to write a few words for this occasion. A year ago, I described a brief history of our company and key factors that made it successful. 2018 was an extremely successful year for OpenRules as well: we improved the product and many major corporations became our new customers. But in this post I want to look to the future and to share some of our upcoming and long term plans. Continue reading →

Oct 26 2017

OpenRules Release 6.4.3

OpenRules® Release 6.4.3 generates new, more compact execution reports with explanations, adds decision importing to integrate loosely coupled decision models, allows using lists along with arrays and extends various operators on them, enhances date/time manipulations and adds more features requested by customers.  Here is the list of of newly added capabilities: Continue reading →

Mar 5 2017

Happy 14th Birthday, OpenRules!

This week during a conference call with a large potential customer I had shown them our release history. Suddenly I realized that OpenRules just passed its 14th birthday. I remember as we started in 2003 with just a few people and a strong desire to build the best Business Rules Product. And now, 14 years later,  I am glad to share multiple OpenRules success stories at the world largest international corporations and government agencies. In this post I will briefly look back to better understand the factors that contributed to the commercial success we enjoy as a company today. Continue reading →

Dec 21 2016

New OpenRules Release 6.4.1 with DMN Why-Analyzer

whybutton“Imagine you had a Why Button handy whenever you encountered some disconnect in day-to-day business operations. Hit the Why Button and presto – answers appear in the form of relevant business rules” – Ron Ross, 2013

The release OpenRules Release 6.4.1 introduces a new add-on called “Why-Analyzer for Decision Modeling” that provides such a Why Button for decision models created in accordance with the DMN standard. Actually it is much more than just a button but rather a graphical interface that allows business analysts to analyze the results produced by their decision models using their own test cases created directly in Excel. See a brief video and try it yourself without any downloads from here. There are several more product improvements described in the release notes. You may download the latest release and try your own decision models with OpenRules Why-Analyzer. Continue reading →

May 3 2016

OpenRules at BBC 2016

This year OpenRules will again be an exhibitor at the Business Rules and Decisions Forum 2016 at BBC conference on Oct 31- Nov 4, 2016, Las Vegas, NV. We are sponsoring this major BR&DM event for 13 years in a row. I’ve just received a confirmation that my presentation“Why” and “What-If” Buttons for Business Decision Management” has been accepted. Here is an abstract: Continue reading →

Apr 6 2016

Decision Models: Finding Alternative and Optimal Decisions

People frequently assume that a good, consistent decision model should produce one and only one decision (solution) for any valid input. However, in real-world applications we frequently deal with situations when a decision model may produce multiple feasible solutions for the same input. And it does not mean that the decision model is incomplete – simply a user may choose the most appropriate solution among all produced decisions. It can be done interactively or by adding more rules. I’ve already provided an example “Monkey Business Analyzed” that describes how to deal with multiple decisions using OpenRules What-If Analyzer.  In this post I will describe another  decision model that also shows how to choose an optimal decision among multiple feasible decisions. Continue reading →

Dec 31 2015

OpenRules 6.3.4 Introduces What-If Analyzer of Decision Models

On December 28, 2015 we published a new OpenRules release 6.3.4 that introduces What-If Analyzer, the first tool of this type in the Decision Management domain. Its main purpose is to support what-if analysis of decision models built in accordance with the DMN standard. What-if analysis is the process of changing the business rules that represent business logic to see how those changes will affect the outcome of the decision model. Here is the main view of the What-If Analyzer for the decision model “Make a Good Burger” offered by the DMCommunity.org: Continue reading →

Jan 9 2013

How to compact large decision tables

A well-known problem with decision tables is that they frequently become too big and too difficult to manage.  It is also well-known that OpenRules utilizes Excel-based decision tables as its major representation mechanism for business rules.  So, I decided to share some methods used by our customers to make large decision tables more compact. Continue reading →

Oct 12 2012

Deploying OpenRules Applications on Cloud

A week ago at JavaOne Conference in San Francisco I had a chance to talk directly with several providers of cloud deployment solutions for Java applications. I was really impressed with a Ukrainian startup “Jelastic” that just won the Java Community’s version of Oscar and was endorsed by Dr. Gosling – read more here. Coming back home to NJ, I decided to try it myself. I took the existing web application that implements a popular game “Nim” using OpenRules decision tables and forms. It looks as follows:

Previously this web application was deployed at the local Tomcat, and I wanted to move it to the Jelastic’s cloud with minimal efforts.  And I had almost no problems of doing that! Now you may try to play Nim yourself from the cloud using this URL http://openrules.jelastic.servint.net/Nim/. What have I actually done?

Continue reading →

Aug 9 2011

OpenRules 6.1.1 is available for downloads

A new release 6.1.1 further advances the Executable Decision Model introduced by the OpenRules-6 in March 2011. It provides new features based on the real-world feedback. In particular, the release 6.1.1 includes more advanced templates for for Decisions, Decision Tables, and Glossaries. It also allows a user to go beyond the limitations of the Decision Model by adding different kinds of decision tables that support rules overrides. 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 →

Nov 11 2010

Rule Solver is now JSR-331 Compliant

OpenRules has announced that its redesigned Rule Solver™ is now JSR-331 compliant. Rule Solver™ is a long time available optimization component of OpenRules® BRMS that allows users to define and solve constraint satisfaction and optimization problems within a business rules environment. Continue reading →