Introduction

IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules is a leading Business Rule Management System (BRMS) that offers a comprehensive set of features covering all aspects of business rules, from design, development, testing, deployment, execution to maintenance.

Web service is a technology that allows applications to communicate with each other in a platform- and programming language-agnostic manner. A Web service is a software interface that describes a collection of operations that can be accessed over the network through standardized XML messaging. Web service is widely used and plays a central role in most service oriented architecture (SOA).

JRules introduces a feature called Hosted Transparent Decision Server (HTDS) that allows the decision services to be exposed as web service with no additional program coding required.

Back to top

Installation and configuration

To run this sample, the following products need to be installed and configured properly:

• IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules V7.0.x

After installation, we should be able to:

• Launch Rule Studio that comes with the JRules installer.
• View the Rule Execution Server console homepage at http://localhost:8080/res/. This is supported by the out-of-box tomcat server instance. Additional configurations are required for JRules to run on other application servers, such as WebSphere, or Oracle WebLogic.

Note that the following JRules bundles/components are not needed to run the sample.

• Rule Team Server bundle
• Decision Validation Service
• Rule Solutions for Office

Back to top

Scenario overview

The business scenario is very simple. Assume there is a Java EE web-based loan quotation application that takes in customer information and invokes the decision service to determine the loan rate if the loan application is eligible. For simplicity, we determine the loan rate with the loan amount and the age of the applicant provided. Two key entities are Customer and Loan.

There are two ways to model JRules Execution Object Model (XOM), which is the underlying object model that JRules leverages on during the actual execution. The domain objects can be either modeled in Java or XML. We use XML XOM in this example.

There are two rules implemented in the rule project, Loan Value and Young Applicant. They are categorized into Eligibility and Rating sub-package respectively.

          
if
    the advance amount of the loan of 'the customer' is more than 100000
then
    set the decision of the loan of 'the customer' to "Declined";
else
    set the decision of the loan of 'the customer' to "Accepted";
    set the rate of the loan of 'the customer' to 5.5;

                   
if
    the age of 'the customer' is less than 21
then
    set the rate of the loan of 'the customer' to 6.5;

The orchestrated ruleflow wire the rules from both eligibility package and rating package.

The RuleSet parameters define the data interface for the ruleset that will be invoked as the decision service. For every Customer input, the decision service is able to determine what the appropriate loan rate is. The loan rate will be returned in a updated customer object via customer.getLoan().getRate().

There are many integration options available out of box, for example, Web service, J2SE or Local/Remote EJB mode etc. In this article we will learn how to enable it as a Web service. Assume we already have this rule project LoanRules (comprise of all artifacts presented above) created before hand, what we are going to do next is as follows.

1. Create a RuleApp project to package LoanRules into a RuleApp Archive
2. Create a Rule Execution Server Configuration for the built-in Tomcat Server
3. Deploy the RuleApp Archive to Tomcat
4. Generate and Verify the WSDL file of the Decision Service
5. Run a Web service Client to invoke the Web service

Back to top

Detailed explanation

Step 1. Create a RuleApp project to package LoanRules into a RuleApp Archive

Create a new RuleApp project using "New Project" wizard. A RuleApp project is used to generate a RuleApp archive.

Specify "LoanRules" and add it to the RuleApp project. By doing this, we are telling JRules that the RuleApp archive will contain the rules defined in Rule Project "LoanRules".

Accept all other default settings, and click "Finish". Now the RuleApp project "LoanRuleApp" is ready.

Step 2. Create a Rule Execution Server Configuration for Tomcat

Note that though this step is optional in deploying the ruleapp to Rule Execution Server (RES), it is a recommended and more systematic approach to store the RES configuration for future use. It is much easier to switch the target RES if we have a list of RES configuration available for development, testing and production environments.

Input the right configuration for Tomcat server, and specify the user and password for Rule Execution Server (RES) Console that running on this tomcat instance. Verify the connection is working by clicking on the "Test Connection" button.

Accept all other default settings, and click "Finish". We now have our RES Configuration Project. This project will be used by the RuleApp project we created in Step1 for a proper deployment.

Step 3. Deploy the RuleApp Archive to Tomcat

Double click "archive.xml" file in LoanRuleApp project folder.

Notice there is a "Deploy" link at the bottom left of the panel. Click on it, we are asked to select a versioning policy. Since this is our first time deploying a RuleApp, we select "Increment RuleApp major version".

Click the first radio button and select "Tomcat". This is to tell JRules that we want our rules to be deployed on the Tomcat server. Click "Finish" to complete the wizard.

The console panel will have the verbose printout indicating that the deployment is successful.

Step 4. Generate and Verify the WSDL file of the Decision Service

Log on to the RES console on Tomcat, the default URL is http://localhost:8080/res. Change the hostname or port if necessary. The default user name and password are resAdmin.

Once log in, Click on the "Explorer" tab. A list of deployed RuleApps are displayed. In this example, we shall see a RuleApp named "LoanRuleApp" with version 1.0.

Click on "LoanRuleApp" to enter the RuleApp view. This is where we edit custom properties for LoanRuleApp. On the bottom "RuleSet" panel, there is a row with name "LoanRules". This is the ruleset included in LoanRuleApp.

Click on "LoanRules" to enter the RuleSet view.

We will see a link "Get HTDS WSDL for this ruleset version". Click on it to generate a WSDL file for this decision service. We will be directed to the WSDL page. This web service end point URL is http://localhost:8080/DecisionService/ws/LoanRuleApp/1.0/LoanRules/1.0?WSDL.

Step 5a. Simulate a Web service client using SOAPUI to invoke the Web service

In this step, we will use SOAPUI as the web service client to test the above Web service.

Firstly, create a new SOAPUI project by specifying the WSDL URL in the wizard dialog box, http://localhost:8080/DecisionService/ws/LoanRuleApp/1.0/LoanRules/1.0?WSDL. Optionally tick the option "Create sample requests for all operations" to take a look at what the structure of the input XML looks like.

Secondly, paste the following XML into the request textbox on the left hand side of SOAPUI. Note that there is a postfix "Z" for the DOB of the customer, which means the same time zone as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:dec="http://www.ilog.com/rules/DecisionService" 
xmlns:loan="http://ilog.com/loan" 
xmlns:par="http://www.ilog.com/rules/param" 
xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
   <soapenv:Header>
   </soapenv:Header>
   <soapenv:Body>
      <dec:DecisionServiceRequest>
         <par:inputCustomer>
            <loan:Customer>
               <loan:ID>AB1265H</loan:ID>
               <loan:Salary>35000</loan:Salary>
               <loan:Dob>1960-01-01Z</loan:Dob>
               <loan:Security/>
               <loan:Loan>
                  <loan:AdvanceAmount>100000</loan:AdvanceAmount>
                  <loan:Term>36</loan:Term>
                  <loan:PaymentFrequency>1</loan:PaymentFrequency>
                  <loan:ID>AB1265H</loan:ID>
                  <loan:Product/>
               </loan:Loan>
            </loan:Customer>
         </par:inputCustomer>
      </dec:DecisionServiceRequest>
   </soapenv:Body>
</soapenv:Envelope>

Sample SOAP Input Message in XML

Click on the "Run" button, the reply soap message in XML will be shown on the right hand side, from which we should be able to find information related to the business decision: Loan Accepted with the rate of 5.5 percent.

        
<Loan>
    <AdvancedAmount>1000000.0</AdvancedAmount>
    <Term>36</Term>
    <Rate>5.5</Rate>
    <RepaymentAmount xsi:null="true"/>
    <Decision>Accepted</Decision>

The SOAPUI GUI we have by now may look like the screenshot below in figure 18.

Step 5b. Run a Apache Axis Client to invoke the Web service

Instead of leveraging on SOAPUI, advanced developers may want to implement an Apache Axis client to test the Web service. For example, we will be using a .NET application to verify this Web service.

We invoke the service by using ServiceLocator and PortType classes. These classes are auto-generated by WSDL2Java ant target.

DecisionServiceLoanRules_ServiceLocator service 
    = new DecisionServiceLoanRules_ServiceLocator();
DecisionServiceLoanRules_PortType port 
    = service.getDecisionServiceSOAPlocalhost();

DecisionServiceRequest request = new DecisionServiceRequest();
DecisionServiceResponse response = null;

InputCustomer customerWrapper = new InputCustomer();
Customer customer = new Customer();

Initialize Axis ServiceLocator and portType instance

We continue to set the input data of type Customer. It has the following values set. In particular the DOB of the customer is January 1, 1960, and the loan amount is $100,000.

customer.setID("AB1265H");
customer.setSalary(35000.00);
customer.setDob(new Date(60,1,1));
Loan loan = new Loan();
loan.setAdvanceAmount(100000.00);
loan.setTerm(36);
loan.setPaymentFrequency(1);
loan.setProduct(new Product());
customer.setLoan(loan);

Populate Input Data

The last step is to invoke the decision service and print the loan rate. If the decision is to decline the loan request, Customer.Loan.Decision attribute will be set to "Declined".

response = port.executeDecisionService(request);			
InputCustomer customerWrapperReturned 
    = response.getInputCustomer();
System.out.println("The decision is " + 
    customerWrapperReturned.getCustomer().getLoan().getDecision());
System.out.println("The rate is " + 
    customerWrapperReturned.getCustomer().getLoan().getRate());

Extract and Print output Data

Next, we run the client. The result returned is printed on the console. The loan will be accepted, the implied loan rate is 5.5 percent. The first output message "Unable to find required class..." concerning missing MIME library is irrelevant to our test case, ignore it.

Conclusion

JRules generates and hosts the web service automatically upon a successful RuleApp deployment. This combines the agility that JRules offers with the flexibility that comes with Web Services. This feature facilitates a smoother integration with other IBM products such as WebSphere Process Server, WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus and WebSphere Message Broker.

Resources

Learn

• IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules v7 Information Center is a single Web portal to all WebSphere ILOG JRules v7 documentation, with conceptual, task, and reference information on installing, configuring, using and customizing your WebSphere MQ environment.
  
  
• Get started with a comprehensive tutorial that cover most major topics in JRules.
  
  
• Read further about what is new in JRules v7 with technical resources for detailed explanation on new features introduced in JRules v7.
  
  
• Download WebSphere ILOG JRules v7 Trial, a no-charge trial download of WebSphere ILOG JRules v7. It includes limited online support for Windows and Linux installations at no charge during the trial period.
  
  
• Check out the developerWorks WebSphere application connectivity zone to access WebSphere application connectivity (formerly WebSphere business integration) how-to articles, downloads, tutorials, education, product info, and more.
  
  
• Check out the developerWorks WebSphere business process management zone to access WebSphere BPM how-to articles, downloads, tutorials, education, product info, and other resources to help you model, assemble, deploy, and manage business processes.
  
  
• In the SOA and Web services area on developerWorks, get the resources you need to advance your skills.
  
  
• Stay current with developerWorks technical events and webcasts focused on a variety of IBM products and IT industry topics.
  
  
• Attend a free developerWorks Live! briefing to get up-to-speed quickly on IBM products and tools as well as IT industry trends.
  
  
• Follow SOA on Twitter.
  
  
• Watch developerWorks on-demand demos ranging from product installation and setup demos for beginners, to advanced functionality for experienced developers.
  
  

Get products and technologies

• Evaluate IBM products in the way that suits you best: Download a product trial, try a product online, use a product in a cloud environment, or spend a few hours in the SOA Sandbox learning how to implement Service Oriented Architecture efficiently.
  
  

Discuss

• Get involved in the My developerWorks community. Connect with other developerWorks users while exploring the developer-driven blogs, forums, groups, and wikis.
  
  

About the author

Yang Chen Ming has six years of experience with a primary focus on Business Rule Management System and JEE. For the past four years, Yang has been working extensively with the ILOG JRules portfolio.

Rate this article

Comments

Back to top

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Installation and configuration
• Scenario overview
• Detailed explanation
• Resources
• About the author
• Comments

Next steps from IBM

Rational Tester for SOA Quality is an automated web services testing and SOA testing tool that supports Web services SOAP, HTTP(S), JMS, WS-Security, UDDI, and RESTful standards.

---

• Try: The no-charge Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality helps quality assurance professionals validate web service based SOA application..
• Article: See the whats new with Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality, and its Generic Service Client, which provides a single client to interact with any SOA service type.
• Tutorial: Get hands-on experience with this Transport for SOAP feature tutorial using Rational Tester for SOA Quality.
• Buy: Rational Service Tester for SOA Quality

Dig deeper into SOA and Web services on developerWorks

IBM SmartCloud trial. No charge.

Unleash the power of hybrid cloud computing today!

---

Public and private solutions in one trial.

Special offers