So I have a new assignment at work along with moving from team Häschenhetterzufuhren (A) to team Arrogant Bastards (B). My purpose in moving is to bring some CAB/SCSF experience building MVP/MVC Application Code to balance the teams. Right off though I have a major task to acheive, a rules engine for the corporations payroll garnishments. This is very interesting to me, being I'm of a not so average tilt in political alignment, that I am now trying to simplify and make sense of what boils down to Government regulation. Egads I say.
The components that I will however focus on, sense the regulations are often nonsensical and often confusing (even to the officials who wrote them) I will trying to make the rules engine as flexible as can be for the hard workers of Labor Ready to meet the demands and still get those checks out to all those hard working people of the company!
With that below are a zillion notes to myself in regards to my initial research and observations on the rules engine I will need to build.
The first thing that came up was iLog's business rules engine software. This package(s) looks promising but am not sure what kind of funding is to be placed into this part of the software solution. I will definately research this further to identify where the cost point is. I also need to figure out how easily the implementation and integration of iLog's software to the existing product build would be. One thing that looks like a definate positive for this package is there exists a .NET implementation! Yeeehaaaw!
The C# Source site has some good stuff. One is a simple rules engine and one (I'm assuming) more complex engine. Both are open source so I'll be checking those out, but will have to also research the licensing to see if I can use them in a Corporate environment. The first one linked from this site is the NxBRE, the first .NET Rules Based Engine for open source. The second one linked from this site is the "SRE" or Simple Rules Engine. Both look ok, the NxBRE being a little more than the other. I'll find out in the coming days.
The last two links I got from Google where over at the Code Project website. I've used this site a dozen or more times for good reference material. This topic also leaves me with some good starting points. I don't think either of the linked projects are as thorough as the above described projects. As always though, any reference is welcome when it comes to developing solutions. The first link was for an "Event Based Rules Engine" by Darren Pruitt. The second was "Using a Rules Engine to Seperate Business Rules from the Application" by Jeff Bramlett.
I also found some cool stuff at the website The Server Side. If anything this site has an interesting and in my IMNSHO (in my not so humble opinion) I think it has a really snazzy layout and graphic design to it. It seems to work well with the amount of data presented on the screen. For most sites it would NOT work well, but this site is for geeks and we like our information by the train load!
…and thus, for now, my research ends until later in the day…
