Drools, developed by Red Hat, is a Business Rules Management System (BRMS) designed to streamline and automate decision-making processes. According to the vendor, Drools caters to a wide range of professionals including business analysts, software developers, and data scientists, and finds application in various industries such as the financial services and healthcare sectors.
Key Features
Drools Workbench (web UI for authoring and management): According to the vendor, this web-based application provides a user-friendly interface for creating, editing, and managing business rules. It supports collaboration among team members, version control, and rule deployment.
Drools Expert (business rules engine): The core component of Drools, it executes business rules written in the Drools rule language (DRL). According to the vendor, it supports both forward and backward chaining rule execution, complex rule conditions and actions, and provides rule evaluation and inference capabilities.
Drools Fusion (complex event processing features): According to the vendor, Drools Fusion enables real-time event processing and complex event detection. It supports event correlation, pattern matching, temporal reasoning, and allows the definition of event-driven rules and actions.
jBPM (process/workflow integration for rule orchestration/flow): With integration to the jBPM workflow engine, Drools allows the seamless integration of business rules with business processes. According to the vendor, it supports the definition and execution of rule-driven workflows, provides flexibility in defining rule execution order, and allows the integration of human tasks and decision points.
OptaPlanner (automated planning): The integration with OptaPlanner constraint solver enables the optimization of resource allocation and scheduling problems. According to the vendor, it supports the definition of optimization constraints and objectives, provides various optimization algorithms and strategies, and allows the integration of automated planning with business rules.
Decision Model and Notation (DMN) support: According to the vendor, Drools offers full runtime support for Decision Model and Notation (DMN) models at Conformance level 3. It allows the execution of DMN decision tables and models, provides a graphical representation of DMN models, and supports the definition of decision logic using DMN expressions and decision tables.
Eclipse IDE plugin for core development: The integration with Eclipse IDE provides a dedicated plugin for Drools rule language (DRL) development. According to the vendor, it offers syntax highlighting, code completion, rule validation features, and enables remote debugging of rule execution.
Maven Central repository availability: Drools is available in the Maven Central repository, simplifying dependency management and integration with Maven-based projects. According to the vendor, it provides access to the latest stable releases, simplifies inclusion in project build configurations, and allows seamless integration with other Java libraries and frameworks.
