Customer Reviews

Business Rules Management and Service Oriented Architecture: A Pattern Language

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ian Graeme's new book "Business Rules Management and Service-Oriented Architecture" is a fairly technical look at business rules, the technology of a business rules management system and patterns of using them. The book gives a fairly quick overview of SOA and then introduces business rules, both as an approach and as a class of technology. He covers different execution styles, the features of a Business Rules Management System and compares three products (Blaze Advisor, JRules and Haley). For JRules and Blaze Advisor at least he is already out of date in the details but you still get a feel for the products and his method for evaluating tools is a useful read for anyone who likes to compare rules products with the traditional list of features.

Ian builds on many of the basic methodology steps outlined in previous rules books (like Barbara von Halle's) and then adds a really interesting section (about a third of the book) or patterns for requirements, elicitation, development, writing and organizing business rules. While some are fairly straightforward it is still a nice set and an interesting approach very suited to a more flexible methodology (like agile or similar).

I enjoyed the book and if you are looking for an up to date book on rules and SOA this should be on your list.

I'm not sure why I gave it those two stars. I read half of it and learned absolutely nothing. The author may be extremely knowledgeable about business rules, and he also may have wide-ranging knowledge on many subjects, and he obviously has an extensive vocabulary and skill with grammar, but he knows nothing at all about communicating as a teacher.

There is no orderly progression of concepts. There is no schematic, in pictures or words, of the knowledge that the reader is about to learn. It's just... I don't know. Partly a history of who said what about business rules since the 1980's, partly a rehash of OO, SOA and component concepts you can understand better by reading Wikipedia, and partly, perhaps mostly, a stream of conscious technical writing book thingie.

I read a lot of technical books. This one has very poor writing. If I knew a lot about business rules perhaps it would have been interesting. But, of course, that's not why I bought it.

Final complaint because I'm so irritated: why is there a caret over the 'o' in 'role' every time the word is used? Is the writer switching to French every time he uses that word? gggrrrrrrr

I bought this book after careful consedering all Business Rules books, offered by Amazon. A good choice indeed.
As an enterprise architect I came across themes like architecture principles, SOA and business requirements. Business rules in relation to architecture is a much debated issue. So when I came to be involved in a Business Rules project for a customer, I decided to arm myself. What did the book deliver? Well:
- clear and pleasant writing style.
- answers to FAQ right from the preface.
- relate BR to SOA.
- functional and management perspective. Technology and concepts. Not too deep, not to hi-over.
- insight in leading products (be it anno 2007, but good enough for a benchmark).
- 42 (:-) solution patterns.
- a checklist for evaluating BRMS's.

Excellent!