irSOA^™ - Rule Execution Across the Enterprise

Implementing Rules as Services for an SOA Approach

Combining rule-based technology with an SOA (service-oriented architecture) approach is an effective strategy for enforcing consistent use of business rules across the enterprise. This is especially important for those organizations dealing with compliance and regulatory issues.

irSOA makes it easier for InRule users to access the InRule rule engine as a service. Integration of rules into an existing service ecosystem (ESBs, etc.) is straightforward and largely "pluggable."

Any of the rules or calculations, or sets of rules and calculations, stored in irCatalog can be published as a web service, which we call a rule service. InRule publishes each service using Web Services Description Language, or WSDL, an XML-based language for describing Web services and how to access them. WSDL services are "discoverable" and therefore can be called from any platform or application that is web service enabled.

Users are able to access the engine service without requiring InRule on client machines, making the service more accessible from other platforms including J2EE application servers and BPM tools. This simplifies deployment, reduces dependency on client machines, and generally improves performance.

irSOA can be easily configured for use with secure sockets (SSL), a requirement for those customers who are transmitting sensitive data to the engine. irSOA also includes full support for .NET Windows Communication Foundation (WCF.) WCF offers direct support for alternative transports such as MSMQ.