IBM Business Rules service upgrade on Bluemix

The IBM Business Rules service enables developers to easily maintain business logic separate from application logic. This means that there will not be any hardcoding of business logic in your applications and you will spend less time recoding and testing once the business policy changes.

A new version of the service is set for release on October 6, 2016 in Bluemix, and is available in Dallas, London and Sydney. This version features exciting improvements and important changes that existing users are encouraged to review.

What are the benefits of the upgrade?

• A Rule Designer that is easier to use
• Superior performance with Java 8 and a high performance decision engine
• Increased flexibility to design and deploy decision service content
• Alignment with IBM Operational Decision Manager (IBM ODM)

The Rule Designer simplifies the path to both author rules and deploy operational decision services. This simple and straight path will aid in quick functionality tests while saving you valuable time to focus on more challenging cases. The existing rule projects that are using the legacy features can be easily migrated to the new path by using decision service projects and the decision engine.

Decision service rule projects provide a better way to define which decision operations will be executed and how to deploy them. From just one decision service you can define multiple executable rule sets for both tests and production. The new service is aligned with the current version of IBM ODM and the rule projects are compatible both on premise and on cloud.

The service also brings a new supported environment which includes a Rule Designer now based on Eclipse 4.4.2 (Luna), with added support for MacOS X. Rule Designer is now compatible with the Eclipse plugin for IBM Bluemix. The Business Rules service also supports Java 8 (IBM or Oracle), for better performance.

Upgrading to the new service

1. Download and install the new Rule Designer here.
2. Migrate from classic rule projects to decision service projects here.
3. Switch the decision service engine from classic rule engine to decision engine: in Rule Designer, open the properties of a decision service main rule project. From the rule engine tab, select decision engine.
4. Create a new instance of the service. Any existing Business Rule instance that was started before October 6th will remain on the previous service version. You will need to delete any older instance.
5. Deploy decision service ruleApps to the new service instance. Rulesets are now defined through decision operations and ruleApps are defined and deployed from deployment configurations.

It is recommended that you install the new Rule Designer in a separate folder from any previous instance, while still keeping the previous version. You will also want to create a new workspace and copy and import any existing rule projects. Rule App projects and Rule Execution Server Configuration projects are no longer necessary. They will need to be replaced by deployment configuration elements in decision service projects.

Need help?

For additional assistance, please see the Business Rules service documentation or submit your question on Stack Overflow using the #ibm-bluemix and #business-rules tags.