Drools 5.0 M3 is Available

Drools 5.0 M3 is out and they are getting close to a general release.  But there is a TON of work to be done on the documentation that is out of synch with anything including M2 and probably M1, especially on the BRMS.  On the other hand, they are spreading out so five different fronts at one time - this is a MASSIVE undertaking to do with five full-time people and a handful of part-time contributors.  Check out http://www.drools.org to get the download, documentation (such as it is) and check out what is going to be the future of share-ware BRMS.  (Note:  BRMS by the traditional definition is NOT the same as defined by Drools.)  But, overall, they are closer and closer to what Fair Isaac and ILOG are putting out.  If you rank Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor and ILOG JRules as about a 8, 9 or 10, then Drools would be about a 5 with a bullet.  At their present rate of development, they will catch them (but only if the Big Two stand still) in a couple of years.

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest (ORF)

I spoke with the other directors of the ORF and it seems that ORF is filling up more quickly than anticipated. We now have another Silver Sponsor (thanks to Dr. Forgy of Production Systems Technology) and a few of the Bronze sponsors have moved up to Silver. Visual Rules is still the # 1 sponsor (Gold) but we are anticipating a Diamond sponsor from a major vendor as soon as marketing finishes up their annual budget and allocates the funds. Such is life in the fast lane. :-) We're negotiating with a major hotel chain for decent room rates as well as a large conference room, bar, restaurant, workout gym, etc., so that you won't have to go anywhere for anything unless you just HAVE to sample a bit of the real Wild, Wild West. We'll know by Tuesday if we have it secured or not.

The conference has guests and speakers from around the world right now; several from the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Columbia and, of course, many from all over the USA. Where else would you get a chance to meet and greet (and have a few drinks with) the major thought leaders in the rulebased community. I look at the signup list and then at the speaker list and it begins to dwell on the unreal - some of the attendees alone would be honored guests at any other conference dealing with rulebased systems. And our speakers are the creme de la creme de la creme. One speaker said that this might well be the "Woodstock of Rulebased Systems". Another likened it to the 1956 (it isn't anywhere near that level) conference at Dartmouth College where the term AI was first used.

What we really need at ORF is a really good PR guy who could tell the world what is happening here in a way that would help folks understand that this is "must attend" event. And with a price tag of only $150, why not? This will be better than attending any five-day or ten-day school hosted by any one vendor. These speakers are the people who invented all this stuff !! Check out http://www.rulesfest.org/OctoberRulesFest/Speakers.html and look at their credentials: The very people who invented Rete, Rete 2, Rete III, CLIPS, Drools, Advisor, Open Rules, OPSJ, CLIPS/R2 as well as the chief engineers and scientist from all of the major vendors. I have only one comment:

Sign up now or there might not be room later.

SDG
jco

ORF - October Rules Fest

Greetings, Programs:

Probably once a month from now until October 21st I'll send out a blog on ORF. Yes, it sounds like a barking dog but that's how it worked out. Here's the deal: It's probably the greatest conference since 1954 BECAUSE (1) It's technical, (2) it deals with rulebased systems rather than the nondescript BRMS (Business Rule Management Systems that could be nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet - and sometimes is), (3) it's being held in the Republic of Texas near my hometown of Fort Worth, (4) it has the GREATEST SLATE OF SPEAKERS on the subject of rulebased systems since 1954 and (5) did I mention the great slate of speakers?

OK - check out http://rulesfest.org and see what I'm talking aBOUT! Check out the sponsors. Check out the speakers. Check out the abstracts. And it's being crammed into three wonderful days and nights in Texas where it is usually fairly warm in mid-October. I won't promise great weather, but usually October is really nice in Texas. Maybe next year we can have a rules fest in March in Sweetwater so that everyone can attend the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, http://www.rattlesnakeroundup.net/main/modules/page/ which is held in March of each year. Or not. :-)

Regardless, we really do have lots of buffalo, jack rabbits, ostrich, llamas and longhorns in Texas. The last night of the conference will be spent at Billy Bobs, http://www.billybobstexas.com/ - the world's biggest Honky Tonk. Three mechanical bulls to ride, lots and lots of pretty ladies in cowgirl outfits and slow talking cowboys. Oh, and lots of real, down-home country music. If you hang around until Saturday night Willie Nelson himself will be there for a $40 reserved ticket or maybe $20 if you're luck enough to get a general admission ticket that night.

Enough about Texas and Billy Bob's. What about the conference itself? If you know anything at all about rules then you know the names of Dr. Charles Forgy, Gary Riley, Mark Proctor, Daniel Selman, Dr. Jacob Feldman, Carlos Seranno-Morales, etc., etc. Check out http://www.rulesfest.org/OctoberRulesFest/Speakers.html for the complete list. The talks are ALL technical ALL the time and NO sales pitches allowed during the talks. But the major vendors will be there to talk about their product(s) - just not during the "official" presentations.

One last thing: If you really want to attend, you had better register NOW! The available space is filling up fast and the cost is only $150 for the conference itself.

SDG
jco

2008 Bossie Awards

Greetings:

Still about as hot as Hell's Back Porch here in Texas but here's some "News You Can Use" - not the normal fluff. InfoWorld recently announced it's Best Open Source (egro, BOSsie) awards for 2008 - the whole thing is at http://www.infoworld.com/archives/t.jsp?N=s&V=107881 were you can check your favorite category. Naturally, I was interested in the best rulebased system (BRMS, if you must) aware that is at http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/08/166-best_of_open_so-6.html for those who care to read the blurb on Drools. There is another interesting one just before that at http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/2008/08/166-best_of_open_so-5.html that deals with Parallel programming. If you are developing today and you want to be among the "elite" class of programmers, then you will have to learn how to program applications for parallel programming.

InfoWorld covered this in the same eLetter with an article at http://cwflyris.computerworld.com/t/3399854/121129892/130373/0/ that covers what and why you need to be able to program in threads in the coming world of programming. (Just when you had it all down, something else pops up - just like "Whack-A-Mole" at the fair.) True enough, you can trust the vendors to do this for you, but if you are developing your OWN software AND you hate J2EE because it took away threaded programming, now is the chance to get it back. Unfortunately, you'll have to pull out all of your old books on Java Threads and C++ threads and do your best to remember what all that did for you. But, and here is the kicker, if you do that and put in the necessary time and work, you will be among the best 1% of the best 1% of the world's best programmers, an even tighter niche that knowing rulebased systems. Hopefully, it will pay better but I'm not sure. More than likely you will have to write your own multi-threaded program (that probably won't be J2EE compliant) to make any money off this deal.

But, if you are a speed freak (like yours truly) then you probably will do it just for the fun of it. Major vendors will pooh-pooh the idea as being not practical or not really necessary ONLY because they don't want to re-architect and re-write their applications.

Congratulations to all 60 of the winners from a pool of more than 500 nominees this year. If you didn't make the list it may have been because InfoWorld was not aware of your product OR because your product is not true Open Source. (I found a couple of non-Open Source that made the list this year but not many.)

SDG
jco

Drools Day Camp

OK, they don't call it that, but the Drools team will be in Dallas, Texas, from October 15th to the October 21st of 2008 for seven days of Hard Core Drools. See http://blog.athico.com/2008/07/texas-october-rules-fest-and-drools.html for the "public invitation." They have sent out an invitation should you want to come and to my knowledge, it's totally free. The best part? It immediately precedes the Dallas Rules Group October Rules Fest (http://rulesfest.org) in Addison. The two events are close but they are not at the exact same location.

So, as Autumn draws to a close and Winter begins to beat on the door, come to Texas for some great food, (usually) pleasant weather, good music and not one but TWO great conferences. Mark Proctor has even found a hotel http://book.bestwestern.com/bestwestern/productInfo.do?propertyCode=44540 with decent rates (where they will be having the Drools meetings.) BTB, Addison, Texas, is in the Northern part of Dallas and has more restaurants per square mile than any other place in the world.

Blogs on top of Blogs

Well, my buddy Mark Proctor has been really busy blogging about ruleflow and (slight oblique reference to Drools documentation on that subject) work flow and how the two things make it easier for business guys to state their problem. I agree with the ruleflow documentation in that a ruleflow is only PART of the overall solution. So, where's the catch?

If you give a man a fish, he will eat today. If you teach him how to fish, he'll never go back to work. OK, bad analogy. How about having a hammer and everything looks like a nail? If you give business people spreadsheets - what we call decision tables but it's still a spreadsheet to them - or a ruleflow - what looks like a typical workflow engine to them - then THAT'S what they will do (and only that) because it is very familiar and it just "feels right". What can I say? We gave them the gun, they shot themselves in the foot with it, and then we blame them for doing it. And we, the rulebase community, claim that we told them the right way to do and that they just messed it up.

OK, all of the above is procedural programming. You can't get around it. It's just another way to do Java or C++ or COBOL or VB or C# or whatever else procedural language is being used. And that is NOT a rulebase because a rulebase is, primarily, declarative programming. Why, oh WHY can't we, the guys who are supposed to know better, still pushing decision tables, decision trees and ruleflow as answers to complex problems. It probably IS an answer to a specific business problem, but not all problems can be solved that way - which is why we invented a rulebase in the beginning; to solve complex problems that defy conventional, procedural programming.

Bottom line? Don't use a hammer when a screw driver is better suited for that purpose. Sure, the hammer will work to drive a screw into a wall, but it won't hold up very long. A screw will work better. (Don't get snarky on me - sometimes a screw is just a screw and not anything sexual.) And PLEASE do say that I'm against ruleflow, decision tables, decision trees, work flow, etc. I'm not. But a rulebase project just HAS to have it boundaries and applications just like any other tool. Use it properly or it will backfire and kill you.

OK, maybe it's off the subject of what Mark was originally trying to write about. But we just HAVE to draw the line somewhere and it's up to me, Mark, Peter, Dr. Forgy, Haley, ILOG, Fair Isaac, etc., etc., to start drawing and try to write "quality" business - projects that have a chance of being extensible, expandable, and all of the other "-able" handles. BTW, here are the links to Marks stuff so you can read it for yourself. You might start with the first two. The others are along the same lines.

The blog link
http://blog.athico.com/2007/11/vision-for-unified-rules-and-processes.html

The Drools documentation
http://docs.jboss.com/jbpm/pvm/

Another blog on same subject
http://www.dzone.com/links/a_vision_for_unified_rules_and_processes.html

And yet one more - pretty much the same thing in a different wrapper
http://digg.com/software/A_Vision_for_Unified_Rules_and_Processes

SDG
Yaakov