WebCast about Windows Workflow Foundation Rules

Tomorrow, there is a free webcast by Kavita Kamani (Microsoft) about using the rules engine that is part of Windows Workflow Foundation. You can register for this event here.

Microsoft's rules engine is a bare bones forward-chaining rules engine. The rule engine can also be invoked without using the workflow engine. When you export a business rule policy from the Rule Manager, it will generate a C# solution that illustrates how rules are invoked without the workflow engine.

Start Date: 5/18/07
Start Time: 2:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
End Time: 3:30 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

How to understand a large ruleset?

Peter Lin has a very valid concern :

My main caution to users is that no matter how nice the writing part is, how
does the tool make it easier to maintain and understand a large ruleset? Does it
have the ability to analyze the rules and show the relationship to the user?

At Acumen Business (where I work), we have addressed this issue by the introduction of the Interactive Rule Map. Sometimes also referred to as Rule Spider. This dynamic rulemap shows the direct dependencies of rules-to-terms and from terms-to-rules.

There is also a complete Rule Graph generation, however that will quickly loose it’s power when hundreds of rules are defined. The interactive rule map is an advanced browser that shows parts of the rule graph.

Currently we are doing some research to integrate the Rule Validation into the Interactive Rule Map. This allows step through debugging of the just the business rules. Our prototype is looking very promising.