This post gathers together some of the resources for learning how to do rules programming, and specifically how to use Oracle Business Rules.
Currently, all publicly available documentation from Oracle is for the 10.1.3 version of OBR:
- The official webpage for Oracle Business Rules
- OBR User's Guide (10.1.3)
- Oracle Business Rules Language Reference (10.1.3)
- OBR SDK Javadoc (10.1.3)
- OBR 10.1.3.4 release notes (there were only minor changes between point releases, so the documentation above listed as "10.1.3.1" applies to all of the 10.1.3 versions)
- Chapter 18 BPEL Process Integration with Business Rules of the Oracle BPEL Process Manager Developer's Guide, which describes using the Decision Service
For questions or issues with OBR, the
SOA Suite category on the Oracle Forums is the the best place to go.
Unfortunately, there aren't many books on rules programming out there. Here are a few of the relevant ones:
- Jess in Action by Ernest Friedman-Hill - while the Lisp-style syntax may be daunting to many OO programmers, there's a lot of good information on how rules engines work in practice and on how to write rules.
- Smart (Enough) Systems by James Taylor and Neil Raden - this book mostly focuses on the business case for improved decision support, but has an excellent chapter on the current state of business rules engines (BRE) and business rules management systems (BRMS).
- Expert Systems: Principles and Programming by Giarratano and Riley - a thorough and deeply technical description of rules principles.
- Introduction to Expert Systems by Peter Jackson - another very technical book
Plenty to get you started in the wonderful world of rules!
