Introducing Rule Execution Server

Rule Execution Server architecture is based on a number of independent, but cooperating, software modules.

Architects, administrators, developers, and testers work together to create, deploy, monitor, and administer decision services that run on Rule Execution Server instances in a development, test, or production environment.

The following steps provide the ordered flow of tasks to execute a ruleset using Rule Execution Server:
  1. Create: Design and create a RuleApp.

    A RuleApp is a deployment and management unit for Rule Execution Server. A RuleApp contains one or more rulesets. You deploy your RuleApps to Rule Execution Server in order to make the ruleset available to a client application. RuleApps can be deployed from a decision service deployment configuration.

    Rule Designer does not explicitly show RuleApps. You use the decision service deployment configuration to hold information to make a RuleApp.

  2. Develop: Design and create a client application.

    To call a deployed ruleset that is contained in a RuleApp on Rule Execution Server, you must create a client application that calls the decision service through the chosen HTDS endpoint (SOAP or REST).

  3. Deploy to the test environment: From a decision service that is ready for deployment, you can deploy one or more RuleApps. You deploy the rulesets that you defined in a decision operation to the Rule Execution Server instance that you defined in a deployment configuration.
  4. Test: Run your client application and correct any errors that you find.

    Before you deploy your decision service to a production server, you must ensure, by testing with sufficient data, that the client application and the decision service are stable and that the results are correct.

  5. Deploy to the production environment: You deploy your validated decision services to the production environment.