Using the CA Rule Engine

Using the CA Rule Engine involves two levels of knowledge: knowledge of the JSR‑94 standard (see the chapter The JSR‑94 Specification), and knowledge of specific features of CA Rule Engine. Knowledge of appropriate techniques for constructing Java applications is also necessary. These techniques involve close coordination between the Java client and the structure of the rulebase.

Building a JSR‑94 application can occur under either of the following use cases or some combinations of the two:

• You begin with a pre‑existing rulebase for which you want to write appropriate Java classes to call the rulebase from a Java application through the JSR‑94 interface, but you may or may not have direct access to the rule author or RDL code to understand the rulebase interface. In this use case, you may need to know how to query the interface of the rulebase. Once you understand the requirements of the interface, you can construct the appropriate Java classes.
• You begin with pre‑existing business objects defined by Java classes or by developing the rulebase concurrently with Java developers. This use case requires writing a rulebase to inference over these objects. Both sides, the Java classes of your client application and the RDL rulebase, must work together to make sure the Java classes are appropriate for the RDL rulebase as in the first case. In addition, the rulebase must properly implement the business logic behind the pre-existing business objects.

It is also possible to configure the use of CA Rule Engine in a Java application under different solution architectures. A single Java client application may be used to register a rule execution set and to execute that rule execution set or these functions can be done in different Java applications. For more information on rule execution sets, see JSR‑94 Services Overview.

For more documentation of CA Rule Engine, see the contents in the doc folder in the CA Rule Engine distribution.

This section contains the following topics:

Construction of Java Client Applications

Processing Considerations

Query RuleExecutionSets and Rules

Use Cases for Building JSR94 Applications