IBM ODM Rules & More - Akif Patel (Rules Architect)

Welcome to my blog – probably the only IBM ODM blog available over the web created by a developer for all ‘rule’ developers. I have tried to list all my work, essential findings, automation tools and utilities in this blog. It also contains resolutions of many frequently faced problems and exceptions during rule development. You can read more about me here.

The purpose of this blog is not to teach developers writing rules using IBM ODM rather to help developers already working on IBM ODM with resolutions of frequently faced problems & challenges, utilities, automations and customizations since our best colleague Google is also silent on our tool. Even, official IBM ODM Community sometimes cannot help us; here is an example where I’m awaiting for a resolution from the community since Jul, 2015, though I already have resolved it myself and created the plug-in XML Scenario Provider.

I would urge the readers to go through the entire blog as it contains many distinguished articles which would contribute to their knowledge-base and share with others if something is useful. I’m always available for challenges and work that would challenge my ability. This page contains highly recommended & most interesting posts.

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LDAP and Decision Center Integration

Many organizations following BRMS approach looks forward to enable LDAP Authentication on decision center so that users can access business console using their organizational credentials and infrastructure team has no need to manually configure and manage application users in WAS. However, numerous organizations don’t succeed due to lack of information available on LDAP & Decision Center Integration.

This article demonstrate the process of integration in following two steps:

1. Decision Center Customization
2. LDAP Configuration on WebSphere Application Server

 

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DVS Scenario Loader – Create DVS Scenarios from XMLs

Quickly create DVS Scenarios using XMLs into DVS Sheet with this Excel Add-in. DVS Testing is no more a headache for ‘rule’ testing.
Features of DVS Scenario Loader:

1. It’s generic means it can be used for any Ruleset
2. It’s capable of loading ‘n’ number of Test Scenarios into DVS Sheet from Test XMLs in one go
3. Nothing is hard-coded
4. All Test XMLs have to be kept in a folder with Domain sheets in another folder, if external domains have been used
5. A DVS Sheet once prepared with parameters, can be used any number of times until XOM is not modified
6. Excel COM Add-In once installed, will be available to server you until disabled explicitly

 

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 XML Scenario Provider – Execute XMLs in Rule Designer

There is no way in IBM ODM to execute serialized XOM XMLs in Rule Designer representing a test scenario, an error or a defect in order to replicate the same, find the cause and fix. However, shouldn’t we try ourselves with the available resources and tools to build something to execute XMLs? Yeah, it’s not easy but not impossible.

Yes, not impossible and I made it possible. All we need to do is build an eclipse plug-in?…Plug-in?? Ohh no!!! Really difficult to deal with. Right?

Nothing to worry. Install my XML Scenario Provider Plug-in, go ahead and execute your XOM XMLs in Rule Designer.

 

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Iterating Over Collections

This question is reasonably common for all rule developers working on complex rule processing. Many times we need to execute a ruleflow task or a bunch of rules over a collection of objects. However, IBM ODM doesn’t provide any built-in construct or Ruleflow element to iterate. However, there exist some workarounds which enable us iterate the collections and apply business rules over the objects enclosed by then collection. There are 3 approaches to iterate collections in IBM ODM.

 

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Ruleset Interceptors and Rule Sessions

Ruleset Interceptors are extremely helpful if we know how to deal with them. Using interceptors, we can inject custom behaviors before and after ruleset execution. We can implement aruleset interceptor on rule sessions to make run-time ruleset selection for execution. A Rule Session is a runtime connection between a client and a rule engine. It is associated with a single ruleset and consumes rule engine resources.

 

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Ant Tasks for RuleApp Migration on RES

ANT stands for Another Neat Tool. It is a Java-based build tool from Apache to automate a build and deployment process that can be executed from command-line. Most of the time we need to migrate our RuleApps on RES from an environment to another such as SIT to UATor STAGE to PROD. There are Ant Tasks available which can help us automate the migration of RuleApps from an environment to another.

 

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Runtime Rule Selection with Dynamic Condition

While working on commercial applications, many a time we come across circumstances where business says that only a subset of rules must be applied on the request data if the request satisfies certain conditions. In other words, rule engine should decide which rule to execute as per the agenda and the rest should be ignored. That is the effectiveness of the rules depends upon the request date received from calling application and we call this Dynamic Rule Selection.

 

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Code Density – ResourceException, XUException: The ruleset parsing process failed

While testing a huge & complex Ruleset particularly with lots of decision tables through Rule Designer or SoapUI, you may have encountered runtime exceptions such as ResourceException, XUException or IlrProductionRulesetIntrospectionException. We can resolve the exception by controlling how .class files are split by the compiler.

 

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Under my research & development…

Decision Tables with Column Filters

Ruleset Deployment automation without RuleApp

Action Rules with fixed UI Templates

Queries to modify rule actions (then part)