Installing Rule Designer

You install Rule Designer on Eclipse. You must have a compatible version of Eclipse to do the installation.

Before you begin

To install Rule Designer in an Eclipse environment, you must make sure that you have the required plug-ins in <InstallDir>/studio/update-sites. If you do not have the plug-ins, use Installation Manager to update your installation package.

You install Rule Designer into Eclipse 2025-12 External link opens a new window or tab. Use at least Eclipse Modeling Tool External link opens a new window or tab or Eclipse IDE for Enterprise Java™ and Web Developers External link opens a new window or tab.

Eclipse 2025-12 uses Java Development Kit (JDK) 21. You can download the JDK from IBM® Semeru Runtimes Downloads External link opens a new window or tab.

About this task

You add the designer plug-ins to your Eclipse instance.

Note:
If you install Rule Designer in an Eclipse environment that uses a non-English locale:
  • The Eclipse messages remain in that language.
  • If Rule Designer provides the verbalizer for the language, you can create rule artifacts in this language. If there is no verbalizer for this language, the rule artifacts that you create are in English.
  • Rule Designer messages are displayed in the non-English locale if it is supported. Otherwise, they are displayed in English.
  • To change the locale so that everything is in English, add the osgi.nl=en_US property to the <Eclipse_InstallDir>/configuration/config.ini file, and then restart Rule Designer.

Procedure

  1. In the configuration/config.ini file of your Eclipse installation, add the IBM_DS_HOME property to define the Decision Server installation directory, for example: IBM_DS_HOME=<InstallDir>/ODM960
    The installation directory contains the components for Decision Server such as executionserver and studio.
  2. Start Eclipse or a supported IBM Eclipse-based product.
  3. Switch to the Java perspective (click Window > Open Perspective > Java).
  4. Open Window > Preferences > Install > Update > Available software sites.
  5. Disable all the sites except the following:
    • https://download.eclipse.org/releases/2025-12/
    • https://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.38/
  6. Add the update sites to install:
    • rule-designer-update-site.zip
    • cobol-importer-license-update-site.zip
    • cobol-update-site.zip
    • pli-update.zip
    • cobol-importer-update-site.win32.zip (for installation on Windows)
    • pli-importer-update-site.win32.zip (for installation on Windows)
    • cobol-importer-update-site.linux.zip (for installation on Linux®)
    For each site to be added:
    1. Click Add.
    2. In the Add Site dialog, click Archive.
    3. Browse to the <InstallDir>/studio/update-sites directory, and select one site.
    4. Click Open.
    5. Back in Add Site, click Add.
  7. Click Apply and Close.
  8. Click Help > Install New Software.
  9. In the field Work with, click All Available Sites.
  10. Click Select All.
  11. Click Next. Eclipse calculates the dependencies and requirements.
  12. In the Install dialog, click Next, select I accept the terms of the license agreements, and click Finish.

    The installation might take a few seconds to complete.

  13. In the Trust Artifacts dialog, select Unsigned and click Trust Selected.
  14. Click Restart Now when you are prompted to restart Eclipse.