OpenLexicon is an open-source business rules and process management tool that rapidly develops applications for transaction and process-based applications. OpenLexicon is known for providing high performance solutions and has been used in a number of enterprise-level applications. You can read about these here . You can use either product separately or in concert. There are two main components of OpenLexicon: the metadata repository and the business rules engine. Major components of OpenLexicon are released as open source software under the OpenLexicon OpenSource License. A good overview of the business rules approach is available here .OpenLexicon has a Wizard that is a web-form based collaborative tool for building business rules and business use cases. For a brief overview of the wizard, look at this link . We have designed the Wizard for non-developers and analysts with light technical skills. It features a richer experience for the users on the web, traditionally only offered by thick-client UIs. The collaboration team assembles groups of business rules into a business use case and published in a metadata file or the database. OpenLexicon provides solid support for web services. You can read about the OpenLexicon WSDL here . There is also an eclipse plug-in for web services here . You create complex application behavior with OpenLexicon’s process management. OpenLexicon can build an application reads data from a file, performs reference data lookups, validates the entire object, and then stores it in a database table. You can read about this here . Plus, you can build the application in the Wizard while writing no code! OpenLexicon also supports web services. A simple architecture diagram for OpenLexicon is included here .
On Wednesday morning, June 12, I gave my paper on the three business rules projects to the ERBC: The projects were: Drools, OpenLexicon and OpenRules. It was well attended and well received. Pete Skangos and I gave everyone a copy of the book and we started an impromptu signing line, until it was a bit past the beginning of the next paper.
Incanto can be implemented to solve the following kinds of decision making problems:
Problems where the expert rule set is large or complex. Incanto is especially suited to managing complexity.
Problems where the rules change frequently. Incanto`s testing capabilities mean amended rule sets can be introduced swiftly and with confidence.
Problems where the expert rules set needs to be applied to large volumes of data.
Where all these conditions apply Incanto is probably the only good answer in the market at present.
Overall this looks like a very strong release, especially with some of the core engine enhancements around temporal reasoning, support for XSDs and delarative type modeling. If the commercial vendors did not think they had a real competition on their hands, Mark and his team will prove them wrong with 5.0. Drools 5.0 is not yet ready for release (they are hoping for a November release) but those of you who like playing with, and contributing to, code that is nearly ready can get it from the downloads page (scroll down). Michael Neale posted Drools 5.0 M2 New and Noteworthy Summary recently and Drools 5.0 M1 - New and Noteworthy before that. You can get periodic updates on the world of Drools from Mark and Michael on their blog.