JSR-94 – Getting Your Feet Wet

Dietrich Kappe, Friday, July 7, 2006 @ 10:08 pm

Over at the Sun Developer Network, you'll find a nice tutorial on writing a business rules application using JSR-94. It makes use of Jess rule engine for its example.

What is JSR-94? From the tutorial:

The specification for the Java Rule Engine API (JSR 94), developed through the Java Community Process (JCP)
program, defines a Java runtime API for rule engines by providing a
simple API to access a rule engine from a Java Platform, Standard
Edition (Java SE, formerly known as J2SE) or a Java Platform,
Enterprise Edition (Java EE, formerly known as J2EE) Java technology
client.

Beyond being useful in that the JSR-94 allows you to interface with any rule engine that supports the standard, it's also useful from a pure code reading perspective. Rule-based systems are different from OO and procedural systems; you have to think and design the applications differently. Reading the Java code of the example should give anyone who has never written a rule-based application a practical understanding of how these things should be built.

Give it a look and study the code. Of course, the standard doesn't solve all of your problems. While it does allow you to write one set of Java code to interface with any compliant rule engine, not all rule engines behave the same. More on that later.

Related posts:

1. Exaggerated Claims and the Importance of Hands-on Evaluation
2. Drools – Getting Your Feet Wet with Open Source
3. Conflict Resolution – Why BRE’s Give Different Results
4. Resources and Announcements
5. Prova – Son of Mandarax (Backward Chaining Rule Engines)

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