InRule™ for Windows® Workflow Foundation

Extending the Windows Workflow Foundation rules engine to deliver the benefits of business logic automation

InRule™ for Windows Workflow Foundationextends the power of Windows Workflow Foundation by providing rules technology for business logic automation: rule authoring and verification designed for business and technical users with Business Language Authoring and centralized rule management. InRule™ for Windows Workflow Foundationprovides key capabilities to ease the inclusion of complex business logic in Windows Workflow Foundation applications:

Microsoft Windows® Workflow Foundation

One of the new core capabilities in the .NET 3.0 Framework, Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation is the programming model, engine, and tools for quickly building workflow-enabled applications on Windows. It provides an in-process workflow engine, a designer for Visual Studio 2005 to enable both developers and non-developers to define custom workflow processes graphically, and a new Workflow namespace to integrate these within code.

Windows Workflow Foundation has a rules engine that enables declarative, rule-based development for workflows and any .NET application to use.Â Integrated with Visual Studio and designed for application developers, the Workflow Foundation Rules Engine focuses on providing a seamless developer experience between workflow and rules modeling, allowing developers to easily incorporate rules at any point in their workflow.

An authoring environment that enables both developers and non-technical users to easily author, test, and maintain business rules the WF rules engine.
Capabilities to extend the Windows Workflow Foundation rules engine, including decision tables and 90+ built in functions.
A Rule Catalog to manage rule check-in/check-out, versioning, and permissions across systems.

Rule Authoring for Business and Technical Users

irAuthor for Workflow Foundationallows business and technical users can easily author and maintain rules with point-and-click ease using Business Language authoring. For users with Microsoft Excel or Visual Basic experience, Syntax Language authoring enables them to be productive immediately with access to over 90 functions and actions in a familiar syntax.

User Verification of Rules

irVerify for Workflow Foundationis the real-time testing tool available from irAuthor for Workflow Foundation. Rule authors can enter data and see the results of rule execution in real time. Test scenarios may also be saved and loaded, allowing users to easily regression test their rules.

Advanced Decision Tables

Decision tables provide a mechanism for significantly reducing the complexity of rules that would otherwise require deep nesting or overly complicated conditions. Optional consistency checking is available to ensure that all possible combinations are accounted for. Missing items may be automatically added and duplicate items may be removed.

Extensive Functionality

In addition to the 90+ functions and actions provided by InRule for Workflow Foundation, the following features are unique to the product:

Invalid fields allow the rule author to mark a particular field as invalid and specify a message indicating why.
Notifications provide a mechanism to send messages to the calling application during rule execution. These messages may be marked Informational, Warning or Error.
While the Workflow Foundation rule engine allows only one object graph to be passed to a rule set, InRule for Workflow Foundationallows multiple objects per rule set . This provides much easier application integration and eases authoring of rules written against disparate objects.
InRule for Workflow Foundationprovides rule execution results that include execution log, invalid field messages and notifications.
Nested conditions eliminate the need to create several related rules with overly complex conditions.
The ability to call one rule set from another makes rule authoring easier by providing the opportunity to isolate rules into functional sets.
Value lists are reusable static lists that ease data management and provide simplified authoring. (For example, given the value list ValidStates: "Employee State is in ValidStates")

Rule Lifecycle Management

irCatalog, common to all InRule products, controls the authoring and maintenance of rules with version control, check-in/check-out, rollback and granular permissions. Rule applications may also be promoted amongst irCatalogs, easing the dev -> QA -> Staging -> Production process.

InRule for Windows Workflow Foundation Product Architecture