Introduction

The DecisionService node in IBM® App Connect Enterprise has a business rules engine that can process rules based on the business content from messages within integration bus flows. The runtime rules engine can come from IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM). The major benefits of using a DecisionService node are shown in the following list.
  • Provides a rule authoring language that is understandable to both business and IT users.
  • Runs tightly coupled for high performance and reliability.
  • Provides another choice to all IBM App Connect Enterprise flow developers that they can author business rules in ODM as an alternative to ESQL.
IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM), has the following major components:
  • IBM Decision Server is the runtime rule engine. It is tightly coupled with IBM App Connect Enterprise to run the business rules that are needed for the message flow.
    • IT users can author, test, and deploy business rules by using an Eclipse-based tool that is called IBM Rule Designer (ILOG® Rule Studio in v7.1). It comes as part of IBM Decision Server (ILOG Rule Execution Server).
  • IBM Decision Center is an optional Rule Governance and Business User component. It allows an enterprise to provide a controlled environment to improve collaboration between business and IT users, and enables business users to view, or to author and view business rules.
The recommended solution that combines IBM App Connect Enterprise and IBM Operational Decision Manager is shown in the following figure.
Figure 1. IBM App Connect Enterprise and IBM Operational Decision Manager solution
This diagram shows how rule sets are updated and how they are called by the IBM App Connect Enterprise and IBM Operational Decision Manager solution

Adding the two products together in this tightly coupled J2SE configuration of ODM had some management limitations and restrictions in informing the rule engine when rules were being updated. The DecisionService node capability eliminates these issues because it adds rule management capability to the J2SE engine by using MBean events and the management facility from the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition engine. Both the management and authoring and business rules engines work on a shared rule persistence layer, which is implemented as a database, to have a centralized single view of the latest business rules.

The DecisionService node has the following main processes, which complement running the business rules.
  1. When the Decision Server Management Console changes a rule, the MBean Server throws an event. A rule set listener detects the event, which causes the cached rule in the decision server of IBM App Connect Enterprise to be updated. (Update rule process)
  2. If a request enters a decision node, a rule request is generated and the request is issued against the decision server (Call rule set process).

A rule set is an ODM artifact that contains one or more individual rules and has pre-defined inputs and outputs. These combined rules, inputs, and outputs provide the decisioning capability that the flow in IBM App Connect Enterprise requires at that point during the flow. Individual rules are not called directly.