Leveraging Business Rules in TIBCO BusinessEvents

Leveraging Business Rules in TIBCO BusinessEvents ™ Tim Bass Principal Global Architect, Director Emerging Technologies Group TIBCO Software Inc.

TUCON Session Information

Complex event processing (CEP) systems – e.g., as engendered by TIBCO BusinessEvents ™ – require sophisticated, easy-to-evolve decisioning logic

Business Rule Systems (BRS) are a well-proven technology focused on the decisioning problem space

This session examines the rationale for leveraging a BRS-based solution to address TIBCO BusinessEvents’ decisioning requirements

Our Agenda

Complex Event Processing (CEP) Review

Business Rules Primer

TIBCO BusinessEvents and Business Rules

Impact of Emerging Standards on TIBCO BusinessEvents

Questions & Answers

PredictiveBusiness TM

PredictiveBusiness TM & Complex Event Processing

CEP Scenarios:

Stock Trading

Automatic identification of buy/sell opportunities

Compliance Checks

Sarbanes-Oxley detection

Fraud Detection

Odd credit card purchases performed within a period

CRM

Alert if three orders from the same platinum customer were rejected

Insurance Underwriting

Identification of risk

" Events in several forms, from simple events to complex events, will become very widely used in business applications during 2004 through 2008 " --- Gartner July 2003 Graphic Sources: TIBCO Software Inc & IBM CEP Situation Manager Event Streams Historical Data Real-time Detection and Prediction

TIBCO’S Event-Decision Reference Architecture

Complex Decisioning Taxonomy Complex Decisioning

Pattern Recognition

Anomaly Detection

Track and Trace

Monitoring (BAM)

Dynamic Resource Allocation

Adaptive Resource Allocation

Constraint Satisfaction (CSP)

Dynamic CSP

Adaptive Marketing

Dynamic CRM

Fault Management

Impact Assessment

Fraud Detection

Intrusion Detection

Fault Detection

Rule-Based Access Control

Exception Management

Compliance Work Flow

Risk Management

Fault Analysis

Impact Assessment

Solving a Broad Class of Complex Problems Detection Prediction Scheduling

Cross Taxonomy Decisioning Requirements Source: IntelligentEnterprise.com Survey 2007, n=200

Complex Decisioning Alternatives

Adaptive neural networks

Bayesian belief networks (Bayes nets)

Business rule-based inferencing

Cluster analysis

Dempster-Shafer’s method

State-vector estimations

Other…

Business Rules Have Been “Mainstreamed” Source: IntelligentEnterprise.com Survey 2007, n=200

Our Agenda

Questions & Answers

What are Business Rules?

Statements of logic representing some business policy used to guide/control/influence said business; e.g.,

If an applicant’s credit score is greater than 700 Then mark the application as approved with an interest rate of 6.5% If a shipment’s content is marked as hazardous Then indicate that the package cannot be shipped by ‘air’ When the stock price for ‘XYZ’ drops by 5% Then execute ‘buy’ order a2583b2

What are Business Rules?

Declarative – as opposed to procedural – in nature; i.e.,

Captures policy in a manner specifying ‘what is needed’ as opposed to ‘how to accomplish’ desire goal

Business rule components

Concept model attributes/properties

Decisioning expressions; typically of the form

If condition(s) Then action(s) , and/or

When event(s) Then action(s)

Where are Business Rules Found?

Data relationships, constraints

Data transformation rules

Business decisions

Business logic and calculations

Workflow logic

Process exceptions

Compliance regulations

Etc.

Data acquisition Data processing Workflow Business logic

How are Business Rules Captured?

Via text editor supporting proprietary language of BR vendor

Decisioning logic visualizations (built on-top-of rule language); e.g.,

Decision tables

Decision trees

Decision graphs

Etc.

How are Business Rules Executed?

Typically, one of two ways

An inference engine

Procedural code generated from previously captured rules

Inference engine is better “fit” for CEP applications given often-encountered requirement

“ Support interactions between decisioning logic sub-components while avoiding need for sophisticated, difficult to understand, difficult to maintain logic sequencing …”

Market leading inference engines based on Rete algorithm

Rete is Greek for “net”

Rete Engine Business Rules Evaluation/Execution Cycle Working Memory Accounts Listings Orders Events Alerts Rule Agenda (Conflict Resolution) A2 A5 A3 A1 Execution Engine A0 Pick and execute the first agenda item from the rule agenda. Rule Base RuleSet A RuleSet B RuleSet X RuleSet Y Pattern Matcher Match Construct Serve Update

Business Rule System (BRS) Ecosystem

The computing infrastructure needed to capture, deploy, and execute business rules as decisioning services

Business Rule Value Proposition

Decisioning technology that’s proven applicable across a broad array of business applications/problem spaces

Allow organization to extract/externalize business logic from computer source code

Akin to how DBMS externalized data models

Improves organization’s ability to

Understand decisioning logic

Reuse decisioning logic across applications

Manage evolution of decisioning logic

Etc.

Our Agenda

Questions & Answers

BusinessEvents Ecosystem Enterprise Metadata (Concepts, Properties, State Models, XML Schemas, Business Rules) BusinessEvents Workbench (Designtime) BusinessEvents Engine (Runtime) Business User Interface Business User Language Decision Tables Runtime Viewer Management Server

BusinessEvents Engine Engine Inference Engine

forward chaining – optimized Rete based rule inferencing

history of objects – calculation of real-time time-series

persistence – virtual memory, 100% failsafe

performance – 10s of 1000s of rules per second

Models

ontology - objects, events, inheritance, relationships, properties

state model – objects life cycle, event patterns, time, alerts, reports

kpi model - real-time calculation, thresholds / alerts

Monitor and Management Channels Embedded DB

BusinessEvents Rules Implementation Value Proposition

Virtual memory with Object Manager

Runtime byte code for fast execution

Model driven leading to efficient rules

Fully integrated with enterprise messaging platforms

Event and XML aware, support XPath and XSLT

Our Agenda

Questions & Answers

The Need for Standards…

From software consumer perspective

Preserve investment; i.e., re-use rules across tools

Interchange; i.e., allows cooperative development/deployment

Re-use; i.e., avoids reinventing wheels

Commoditization; i.e., negates vendor lock-in

Training; i.e., skill sets transferable

From software vendor perspective

Indication of market maturity

Furthers technology adoption

Opportunity to “shake-up” entrenched market

Relevant Standards Organizations common community Java Community Process JSR-94 Rule Engine API PRR PRR RFP SBVR BSBR RFP RIF JSR-94 RuleML.org BMM RuleML.org Organizations Standards 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 W3C RIF WG OMG Business Rules Working Group Business Modeling and Integration BMI

Business Rules Relevant Standards

OMG Production Rule Representation (PRR)

Proposed as a cross-vendor rule modeling representation

Status: Finalized soon

W3C Rule Interchange Format (RIF)

Proposed as a cross-rule-type rule interchange representation

Status: Under development

JCP JSR-94

Proposed as a cross-vendor rule execution API

Targeting the J2SE platform

Prescribing a set of fundamental rule engine operations

Status

Widely adopted by most Java rule engines (including TIBCO BusinessEvents)

Extensions under consideration

OMG MDA / Business Rules Standards Mapping Code / Execution Model Driven Architecture (MDA) Semantics for Business Vocabulary and Rules (SBVR) Production Rule Representation (PRR) Rule Interchange Format (RIF) JSR-94 Platform Specific Models (PSM) UML Models - platform specific Computation Independent Models (CIM) Business Models Platform Independent Models (PIM) UML Models XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) transformation

Q & A