Object-oriented design and implementation of distributed rule engines

Abstract

In this work, a new distributed rule engines paradigm based on object orientation is proposed and a tool partially implemented to support the new paradigm, ICRON, is introduced in order to address the modeling process of large scale rule based programming problems. No object oriented distributed rule engines architecture as a whole is presented to this date in the literature because they use logic language as a part in their rule and fact definitions. Current business rule engines manage and execute business rules. However, they typically lack support for increasingly distributed software systems, in particular, with respect to flexibility and reuse of business rules across distributed rule engines. More importantly, the object oriented architecture of the proposed system together with the unique object oriented distributed rule engines paradigm provides several novelties in the modeling process of rule engines systems such as translation of logic language to object oriented graphical modeling language, providing a high level, algorithmic modeling of rule based problems, extending algorithms by adding Condition-Action (CA) rules, problem specific algorithm developments without writing codes, algorithm models that translates into other algorithm models, solving very large scale rule based problems in a distributed modeling environment that is not possible to solve in a central rule engine and designing a collaboration environment and communication methods for distributed rule engines to solve this large scale problem. With the novelties that they bring, the new conceptual framework and ICRON constitute the most promising distributed rule engines system in the market to answer the current business requirements.