Business Rules Server API

The Business Rules Server is a decision-maker that uses customer-defined tables and customer-defined business rules to build a response for the calling application. The calling application uses the Business Rules Server response to perform a particular action. This concept can also be explained by using an example of an ATM and a sorter application, both running the same item for the same work type through Common Services. Both applications get the same response from the Business Rules Server, though their handling of the response may be different.

The client application determines how the Business Rules Server processing flow is used. The flow determination can consist of data, such as site identification, sort types, or payment origination such as check or ATM. The processing flow can be overridden by a customer code running on the Business Rules Server, which is a multi-threaded application. Within the Business Rules Server are a number of threads which are pre-allocated during system startup to manage API requests.

Whenever the client API connects to the Business Rules Server with the initialize message, the request is passed to the API request queue where it waits for an available API thread. After an API thread becomes available, the thread is allocated to the client API. All the client API requests are then managed by a single thread until the client API issues a terminate request, at which point the API thread is released back into the API thread pool.