How to Build a Business Rules Engine

279

In the previous chapters the rules engine infrastructure was created to manage busi-

ness processes and related metadata. This provides the basis on which the compo-

nents to define rules can be created. In this chapter we will see how to build everything

that is needed to manage a rule type. The rule type selected is a rather simple one: it

validates that data has been entered for required fields on a screen. All the compo-

nents required to deal with this rule type will be built: the interface to define the

rules; the routines to store the metadata; the routines to generate the code; and the

interface to execute the generated code.

Rules Definition Interface

If users are to define business rules, how should they access them? One design alter-

native ...