Aletyx Enterprise Build of Drools Documentation¶

Welcome to the comprehensive documentation for Drools, the powerful Business Rules Management System (BRMS) and Decision Management platform. This guide covers everything from core concepts to advanced implementation patterns, helping you leverage the full potential of Drools in your applications.

What is Drools?¶

Drools is an open-source Business Rules Management System (BRMS) and Decision Management platform that provides a flexible way to express business logic as declarative rules. It allows you to separate business rules from application code, making your systems more maintainable, adaptable, and aligned with business needs.

At its core, Drools offers:

Declarative rule language for expressing business logic
Rule engine that efficiently evaluates rules against data
Decision model support through DMN (Decision Model & Notation)
Rule management capabilities for versioning and governance
Integration options for various application architectures

Core Components¶

Drools Rule Language (DRL)¶

Drools Rule Language (DRL) is the foundation of Drools, providing a powerful way to express business rules in a declarative format. DRL allows you to define when conditions are met (the "when" part) and what actions to take (the "then" part).

rule "Approve Low-Value Loan Application"
    when
        $application : LoanApplication(amount < 5000, creditScore > 700)
    then
        $application.setApproved(true);
        $application.setApprovalReason("Automatic approval for low-value loan with good credit");
end

DRL offers sophisticated pattern matching capabilities, allowing you to detect complex scenarios in your data and respond accordingly. Learn more in the DRL Building Blocks section.

Rule Units¶

Rule Units represent a modern approach to organizing related rules and their data sources. They provide better encapsulation, improved testing capabilities, and are well-suited for cloud-native architectures.

Rule Units offer: - Clear boundaries for rule scope and data access - Modularity for independent development and deployment - REST integration through automatic endpoint generation - Improved reusability of decision components

Decision Model & Notation (DMN)¶

DMN is an industry standard for modeling business decisions. It provides a business-friendly notation that bridges the gap between decision design and implementation.

With DMN, you can: - Create visual models of your business decisions - Define precise decision logic using business-friendly notations - Test and validate your decisions with real data - Deploy your decisions as executable services

Learn how to create your first DMN model in our DMN Basic Example guide.

Getting Started¶

If you're new to Drools, we recommend following these steps:

Understand the basics: Start with our Introduction to DRL and Introduction to DMN
Create your first rules: Follow the guide to create your first DRL rule or first DMN model
Integrate with your application: Learn about implementing decision services
Deploy to production: Explore basic deployment options and advanced deployment patterns

Key Features¶

Pattern Matching and Inference¶

Drools excels at identifying patterns in your data and making inferences based on rules. The Conditions (LHS) guide explains how to write effective patterns that accurately match your business scenarios.

Rule Execution Control¶

Control how and when your rules execute with Rule Actions (RHS) and advanced features like salience, agenda groups, and rule flow groups.

Decision Tables¶

Decision Tables provide a spreadsheet-like format for defining business rules, making them accessible to business users. Learn how to create your first table and run decision tables.

Advanced Topics¶

OOPath Expressions¶

OOPath is an object-oriented path expression language for navigating object graphs in DRL, providing a concise way to access nested properties.

FEEL Expressions¶

The FEEL Handbook provides comprehensive documentation on the Friendly Enough Expression Language used in DMN models.

DMN Listeners¶

DMN Listeners allow you to observe and react to decision evaluation events, enabling monitoring, debugging, and extending the behavior of DMN evaluations.

Cloud-Native Deployment¶

Learn how to deploy your decision services in cloud environments with our guides on basic deployment and advanced deployment options.

Development Tools¶

Aletyx Studio¶

Aletyx Studio is a browser-based environment for creating, testing, and deploying business automation solutions using DMN and BPMN. It provides:

Visual editors for DMN and BPMN
Real-time validation to catch errors early
Testing capabilities built directly into the editors
Git integration with popular providers
Deployment options for development environments
Accelerators to transform models into complete applications

Get started with creating your first DMN model in Aletyx Studio.

Examples and Tutorials¶

Practice your skills with our comprehensive examples:

Vacation Days Calculation: Introduction to DMN building
Travel Insurance Pricing: A deeper dive into DMN building a decison to calculate travel insurance based on various risk factors
Decision Services Implementation: Build complete decision services

Next Steps¶

Ready to dive deeper? Explore these resources:

Drools provides a powerful foundation for creating flexible, maintainable business rule systems that can adapt to changing business requirements while maintaining high performance and scalability.

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