looking for a good rule engine

[Ellen Zhao]

Time to get my hands dirty with technical implementations for BI. I'd really love to try out rule engines. Did a quick googling it's said JESS is simple and cheap JRules is a tool for large organisations. I have some questions though. Does that "simple and cheap" mean poor scalability and/or poor performance? Does JRules' "for large" mean the engine itself is very complex and learning curve would be steep?

Is JESS a good tool for implementing logics for, say, a typical SRS system for a typical university?

Does the book JESS in Action have a PDF format for online purchasing? Any Eclipse plugin for JESS?

Thanks very much in advance for any enlightenment and suggestion.

Regards,
Ellen
[ April 14, 2005: Message edited by: Ellen Zhao ]

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Ellen Zhao:
Time to get my hands dirty with technical implementations for BI. I'd really love to try out rule engines. Did a quick googling it's said JESS is simple and cheap JRules is a tool for large organisations. I have some questions though. Does that "simple" and "cheap" means poor scalability and/or poor performance? Does JRules' "for large" means the engine itself is very complex and learning curve would be steep?

Note that it's "Jess", not "JESS".

Jess's scalability and performance are as good or better than JRules. The difference between the two is that JRules has a lot more turnkey, point-and-click tools, and is targeted towards "business analysts", while Jess is more powerful, flexible and deliberately targeted towards "real programmers."

You can get a free 30-day trial version at http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess .

Is JESS a good tool for implementing logics for, say, a typical SRS system for a typical university?

Yes.

Does the book JESS in Action have a PDF format for online purchasing?

Yes; see www.manning.com/friedman-hill .

Any Eclipse plugin for JESS?

Jess 7, currently in alpha release, has a whole Eclipse-based IDE, with an editor, debugger, and other tools.

We usually talk about rule-engine stuff in the Other Java Products forum; I'll move this there.

[Ellen Zhao]

Okay I just paid for the Jess in Action and got the ebook downloaded. Thank EFH very much!

Best Regards,
Ellen
PS: didn't get chance to come around 3 days ago...belated happy birthday!