Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Summary
Business rules are a key component of any application. Traditionally, these rules are
buried deep within the code of an application, making them very difficult to change.
Yet, in a typical application, it is the business rules that change most frequently,
by separating these out as a specialized service, it allows us to change these rules
without having to modify the overall application.
In this chapter, we have looked at how we can use the Oracle Business Rules engine
to implement such rules, and how we can invoke these from within BPEL as a
decision service.
It's worth noting that you are not restricted to calling these rules from just BPEL, as
the rules engine comes with a Java API that allows it to be easily invoked from any
Java application, or alternatively, you can expose the rules as web services, which
can then be invoked from any web service client.
Finally, while in this chapter, we have only looked at very simple rules. The Oracle
Business Rules engine implements the industry standard Rete Algorithm, making it
ideal for evaluating a large number of interdependent rules and facts. We examine
some of these capabilities in more detail in
Chapter 18
,
Using Business Rules to
Implement Services
.
