JBoss Drools Business Rules [Paperback]

Paul Browne (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2009

This book takes a practical approach, with step-by-step instructions. It doesn't hesitate to talk about the technologies, but takes time to explain them (to an Excel power-user level). There is a good use of graphics and code where necessary. If you are a business analyst – somebody involved with enterprise IT but at a high level, understanding problems and planning solutions, rather than coding in-depth implementations – then this book is for you. If you are a business user who needs to write rules, or a technical person who needs to support rules, this book is for you. If you are looking for an introduction to rule engine technology, this book will satisfy your needs. If you are a business user and want to write rules using Guvnor/JBoss IDE, this book will be suitable for you. This book will also suit your need if you are a business user and want to understand what Drools can do and how it works, but would rather leave the implementation to a developer.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Browne's first job was selling computers in France and things went steadily downhill from there. He spent millons on behalf of a UK telephone company's procurement department and implemented direct marketing for a well-known Texan computer maker before joining the IT department of a company that builds bright red tractors and other seriously cool machines. Paul then embraced his techie side (he was writing games in machine code from the age of 11) and started a consultancy that used IT to solve business problems for companies in the financial and public sectors in Ireland, UK , Belgium, and New Zealand. Eight years later, he now works with an Irish government agency that helps similar software companies to grow past their initial teething pains. More formally, Paul has a bachelor's degree in Business and French from the University of Ulster, a master's degree in Advanced Software from UCD Dublin, a post-grad qualification in Procurement from the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (UK), and will someday complete his ACCA financial exams. Paul can be found on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/paulbrowne , and via the Red Piranha (Business knowledge) project at http://code.google.com/p/red-piranha/ .

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (April 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847196063
• ISBN-13: 978-1847196064
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,830 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Getting a good overview with JBoss Drools Business Rules, February 28, 2010

By 

Eric D. Schabell "erics" (Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: JBoss Drools Business Rules (Paperback)

I read this book early in 2009 when I was diving deeper into the JBoss Business Rules Management System (BRMS) and found it to be a good overview.

It is light on the technical depth, but this is not a problem and all crucial parts of the system are covered. It appeals to both business types and technical types trying to get a grasp of the Drools project components.

The book begins with a good introduction to rules and business rules in an organization, provides help with setting up your Drools environment and provides a tour of the following components in your business rules infrastructure:

* Guvnor, the guided rule editor
* JBoss IDE, the developers rule editing environment
* Testing your rules
* Managing your rules from Excel
* Domain Specific Languages (DSL)
* RuleFlow, graphical rule design

Furthermore, the book takes you through deploying rules in a real life situation and details how the rule engine works all the way down to the RETE algorithm.

This book is a very good place to start your JBoss Business Rules experience, whether you have done rules development before or not. It will get you up to speed on rules, is easy to read, well structured and before you know it you will be designing your first rules package.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful introduction, March 25, 2010

By 

Colin Watson (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: JBoss Drools Business Rules (Paperback)

This book is certainly a useful introduction and explains in detail everything you need to install to get up and running. If you have a technical phobia or don't want information on how to install software, don't read the book. Having said that, it suited what I wanted well. It is difficult to obtain all this information from other sources, so I congratulate the author.

If you are instead looking for a discussion on requirements gathering, rule writing concepts, good practices and implementation aspects, other books would be more appropriate.

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocre book with non running codes., January 9, 2012

By 

Huy Nguyen "JS" (Rocklin, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: JBoss Drools Business Rules (Paperback)

I knew nothing about Drools & this book was only helpful for the overview. The library/api seem to be out of date with latest Drools release. I had problems running the code which was really frustrating for some one who is trying to learn through the code. I gave up on their code examples & had more luck with googling code samples.

I would have given this book a 1 star if it wasn't the fact it is only one of the very few books on Drools available.