So I admit to you right from the start: this is something of an odd journey to undertake. Speaking with colleagues over the years, my own experience is that most developers raise an eyebrow and cast a wary eye toward anything labeled a 'rules engine'. And in fact, it does take a very specific set of requirements to lead to the conclusion that a rules engine is appropriate.
This dude and this other dude supply a good summary of why an organization might decide on going with a rules engine.
So once you decide a rules engine is an appropriate solution, and you pencil that into the sketch of the enterprise, what next?
The big dogs in the Business Rules Management System space cost real money. I'm talking Aston Martin money. And they're very nice, with bells and whistles galore. And if your budget can handle it, then you'll want to check them out. (Here's a hint. There's no shopping cart and checkout page on their web sites.)
But where's the fun in that? Let's look at the free stuff. While my career has been solidly grounded in Microsoft technologies, I'm willing to look to open source for solutions where it makes sense. And besides being a very robust and performant ReteOO-based rules engine, Drools happens to be free.
So this series, over the course of the next 20-something blog posts, will document this entire journey step by step. It begins with no pre-requisites, and will end with a Drools rules engine as part of a .NET enterprise solution, being called by multiple .NET and Java applications, all while running on the Windows platform.
I think it'll be fun.