Substitute a standard web services interface for a speaking tube, a business rules management system for his encyclopedic knowledge of policies and regulations, data mining or predictive analytics for his customer knowledge and adaptive control for his experimentation and you have Decision Management. The Answerer but on an industrial scale.
Let’s start by recapping decisions services. Decision services are services, generally stateless ones, that answer business questions for other services. Decision Services typically have no side effects so they can be called whenever they are needed without the caller worrying that something will change in the system. This means that database updates, event generation or other actions taken as a result of the decision are taken by the caller not by the Decision Service. This is not 100% true but works as a general rule. To work, Decision Services need to contain all the logic and algorithms necessary to make the decision correctly.
JT has posted his view on rules and decisions and how they relate. Given that James talks more about services than events, I thought it would be worth reviewing his post from both a Complex Event Processing and a TIBCO BusinessEvents event processing platform perspective.
”Decision Services:
Support business processes by making the business decisions that allow a process to continue.
Support event processing systems by adding business decisions to event correlation decisions (they are often called Decision Agents in this context).
Allow crucial and high-maintenance parts of legacy enterprise applications to be externalized for reuse and agility.
Can be plugged into a variety of systems using Enterprise Service Bus approaches.”
As IBM absorbs ILOG it will be important that it continue to invest is this multi-platform approach. Not only are there some nice features in the .Net product (that I for one would like to see available to the Java product) but decision management with business rules is, for most companies, a multi-platform problem. The value of using business rules to decision management comes in part from making sure the same rules are used everywhere they are supposed to be used. While deploying business rules in Decision Services on SOA makes this easier, the best solution is to allow the rules to be packaged up and deployed as Java components, Web Services, .Net assemblies or COBOL code so that they can run natively on all the platforms that run the business.
I. Rold. (2009)Key Findings
• Outsourcing and services will increase. There is an increased level of interest within
midsize businesses and across a balanced share of vertical markets toward extending
their externally sourced activities in 2009.
• More business managers than IT managers appear to be involved in service sourcing
decision making.
• Outsourcing growth has slowed, but is still there. Almost 60% of surveyed organizations
have indicated that they will outsource more, versus 7% that indicated they will
outsource less.
• Evergreen objectives and challenges dominate the plans. Client organizations are
predominantly looking for cost reduction, seeking access to resources, aligning IT to the
business needs and getting more value from existing investments.
• Interest in and use of services based on alternative delivery models are on the rise.
Europe is becoming a sweet spot for these new offerings through 2009 and 2010.
Recommendation
• Consolidation of traditional providers, the rise of new and industrialized offerings, and
increasing price pressures are affecting everyone. Careful strategy development,
superior execution (operational control and quality assurance) and a strong
understanding of the current market reality are required. Despite the traditional, although
more intense, requirements for prompt cost optimization, better business alignment and
more value for money, IT and business managers will be required to apply more-diligent
approaches to developing sourcing strategies and management capabilities. Midsize
companies and business managers also need to address these issues..
S. Kanmani, K. Vinupriya, M. Yamuna, and R. Deepika. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication, 3 (3):
1425--1427(March 2015)
P. Patil, S. Sangle, A. Yenare, and R. Sonawane. International Journal on Recent and Innovation Trends in Computing and Communication, 3 (3):
1357--1360(March 2015)
G. Pike. Information Today, 24 (1):
15-16(January 2007)M3: Article; Pike, George H. 1,2 Email Address: pike@law.pitt.edu; Affiliations: 1: Director, Barco Law Library 2: Assistant professor of law, University of Pittsburgh School of Law; Source Information: Jan2007, Vol. 24 Issue 1, p15; Subject Term: INFORMATION services industry; Subject Term: INTERNET; Subject Term: DATA protection; Subject Term: PRICING; Subject Term: PRIVACY, Right of; Subject Term: UNITED States. Congress; Subject Term: DEMOCRATIC Party (U.S.); Subject Term: UNITED States; NAICS/Industry Codes: 519190 All Other Information Services; NAICS/Industry Codes: 921120 Legislative Bodies; NAICS/Industry Codes: 518111 Internet Service Providers; Number of Pages: 2p; Document Type: Article; Full Text Word Count: 1044.