Release 8.2.1

November 20, 2020. New Release 8.2.1 empowers our users with an ability to assemble new decision services by orchestrating existing decision services, allows you to migrate SQL queries to business rules, supports a LEGO-like design of domain-specific libraries of decision services, and several other enhancements.

Service Orchestration. We added a new table of the type “DecisionService” that describes different decision and other services deployed on cloud (e.g. as AWS Lambda) or on-premise. Here is an example:

Currently supported service types include:

    • REST – for REST Web Services like in the table above
    • AWS Lambda – for AWS Lambda functions using their URLs, ARNs, or just symbolic names, e.g. Routing or
      arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:395608014568:function:Routing
    • DecisionModel – for decision models built by OpenRules, e.g. loan.origination.routing.Routing
    • JavaMethod –  any static Java method, e.g. my.EmailService:send

Decision services described in the tables of the type “DecisionService” can be invoked from any decision table by using the standard action-column of the type “ActionExecute“. Here is an example:

provides  simplifies the installation process for Windows, Mac, and Linux, allows free downloads of various sample projects, improves decision explanations by beatifying the execution protocol, and adds several more features requested by our customers. Read more.

Migrating SQL Queries to Business Rules. Starting with this release you may migrate SQL queries to business rules allowing your decision models to communicate directly with relational databases. Read more

Domain-specific libraries of decision services. You improved the way you can develop a domain-specific library of decision services using a LEGO-like design approach. The new release include a new workspace “LoanOrigination” that demonstrates how to do it using the DMN Section 11 example.

Decision Model Properties in the Environment table. Now you can define decision model properties “model.name“, “model.goal“, “model.package“, and “model.precision” directly in the Environment table (usually located in the file DecisionModels.xls). For example, the Environment table in the sample-project “VacationDays” now looks as follows:

The property “model.goal” is optional now. It it is not defined, OpenRules will automatically find the goal that is not a sub-goal any other goal and that has the longest execution path.

If you define the same properties in the file “project.properties” they will override the corresponding properties in the Environment table.

Text Interpolation. Release 8.2.1 gives our customers an option to use text interpolation by putting text decision variables in the double curly braces {{ and }}.  For example, see how it’s being used in the standard sample project “PatientTherapy”:

Download. You may download the Release 8.2.1 from here and try it for free using our SaaS Rule Engine in the AWS Marketplace. If you upgrading your OpenRules projects from previous releases, don’t forget to change the “openrules.version” in your “pom.xml” file to 8.2.1. Read the updated User Manual.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please post them at the Google Discussion Group or send them directly to support@openrules.com.