How to Build a Business Rules Engine

21

The approach taken to building a business rules engine in this book relies heavily on

utilizing metadata that exists for application databases. Such databases contain

business-relevant data, and this data represents much of the raw material that a rules

engine must utilize. The overwhelming use of information technology in the modern

era is to mange data, rather than to perform tasks that do not deal with stored infor-

mation. Thus, databases occupy a central role in rules engine design. In particular,

the structure of application databases must be understood by the rules engines that

use them.

Database design itself is a major field in information technology, and it will not

be covered here. However, it is necessary to review a little of the methodology ...