Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 1 Blaze Software John Tullis DePaul Instructor

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 2 Blaze Software Facts about Blaze Software Blaze Software is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and maintains a global network of subsidiaries and resellers in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Blaze powers e-business projects for more than 200 customers in the high technology, financial, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications, and healthcare industries, and Blaze software is embedded in leading e- business software packages. Blaze offers complete support for extended enterprise implementations and software vendor implementations, including training, consulting, and integration services.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 3 Blaze Software The Blaze Approach Provides rules based personalization, based on the following: Separation of domain logic from application-control issues Explicit representation of business rules in a nearly Natural Language Scalability of logical complexity High performance in a dynamic environment Ability to reuse business logic

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 4 Blaze Software Separation of Domain Logic from Application-Control Issues It is clear that separating out the problem domain’s logic from the rest of the application code will help make it more maintainable. First of all, it is easier to “find” the logic. The logic can then be examined and tested independently from the rest of the application. It can be modified without affecting the rest of the application.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 5 Blaze Software Explicit Representation of Business Rules in a Nearly Natural Language Rapid development and maintenance requires the highest level of representation. The representation that most closely matches the logic described by business users is most likely to be easily changed and extended as required The business user should be able to see concise, natural- language forms of business logic such as: “Customers who have ordered 5000 units from us in any of the last 6 months and have never been late in any payment are Gold customers.”

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 6 Blaze Software Explicit Representation of Business Rules in a Nearly Natural Language Also: “If a customer has had two or more withdrawal actions anytime in the last 4 months without at least 1 corresponding deposit action of equal or greater amount, then they are considered customers prone to attrition.” And: “For every line item on the order that is an out-of-season product, discount the price by 5%.”

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 7 Blaze Software Scalability of Logical Complexity Simple logical statements only scale if the procedural processing of the logic is removed from the developers’ schedule. A business user should be able to extend the rule statements without being concerned about the calling component’s procedural flow. A business user needs to be able to define one rule incorporating business logic after another without worrying unduly about what order the rules must be defined in and what happens if a prior rule is removed.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 8 Blaze Software High Performance in a Dynamic Environment The logic module should perform satisfactorily while allowing for runtime updates to the rules if necessary. This requires that rules not be translated into compiled 3GL, but instead be maintained in a readable format.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 9 Blaze Software Ability to Reuse Business Logic The rules used in an application should be stored in such a way that they can be reused in other applications if required.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 10 Blaze Software The Rules Engine The only solution to all of the above requirements is to use a process —called the rule engine —that evaluates rules on demand.These rules must be stored in a natural-language-like syntax. The rules engine: Is a piece of generic logic processing code Takes direction from the rules defined by the business people and stored in a rulebase Applies the rules to the object data presented by the application program

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 11 Blaze Software The 2 parts of Blaze Advisor A Builder, or development system, with: easy-to-use rule editors and rule syntax complete logic testing and debugging environment visualization tools A Rule Engine, or deployment system, consisting of a high- performance application component designed to easily plug into various software architectures.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 12 Blaze Software Example of “rule” promotionalLineItem is any lineItem such that productClass of lineItem = ('sweater’ or 'skiwear'). If quantity of promotionalLineItem > 3 then discount of Order = 1.08 * quantity of promotionalLineItem

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 13 Blaze Software The Blaze Environment

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 14 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. How does Blaze Advisor work in an application? A. Blaze Advisor is invoked by your API call from your application. Assuming that rules have been loaded into the system (usually on initialization), Blaze Advisor applies the rules to the business objects that have been made visible to it, and furnishes the results to the calling application by updating the properties of business objects as determined by the rules. In addition, Blaze Advisor can also operate in monitor mode as a separate thread monitoring business objects automatically. It can also invoke handlers to provide more information for the rules to execute against (interactive mode).

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 15 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. Blaze Advisor uses Java; is there an alternative if we do not allow Java to be used within our application? A. While Blaze Advisor is written in Java, it is really a component. You can invoke Advisor from: A COM environment (that could include C++ or Visual Basic) A CORBA environment (which supports many languages) Equally, Blaze Advisor rules can refer to external COM or CORBA components written in any supported language.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 16 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. What is the difference between Advisor and expert-systems technology? A. Many expert systems technologies relied on rule engines. However, they tended to be characterized by closed environments, internal object models, and limited performance. Blaze Advisor applies rule engine technology to mainstream software development.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 17 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. How does Blaze Advisor work in a server environment? A. You can plug Blaze Advisor as a rule engine into any frame- work or architecture as required. For example, as a service in a publish-and-subscribe message-oriented middleware (MOM) architecture, the rule engine would receive messages, process them, and send messages like any other service. To handle large numbers of rule sessions, you can use the Blaze Advisor Rule Server to ensure maximum performance and responsiveness for service requests.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 18 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. What is the performance of Blaze Advisor? A. Blaze Advisor performs decision-making operations on business objects.Therefore performance is determined by: the number of rules being executed the number of business objects being processed the processor conditions at the time (CPU speed and load from other applications,etc.) Blaze Advisor uses a highly optimized algorithm to maximize performance under all conditions.

Copyrighted material John Tullis 8/13/2015 page 19 Blaze Software Blaze Technology Q & A Q. How can international customers update the business rules? What languages can rules be written in? A. Blaze Advisor uses the Java language’s built-in international language set to allow you to write rules in any language Java supports. The rule language expressions (“is,” “the,” and so on) remain in English. Q. What languages has Advisor Builder (Blaze Advisor development system), been localized for? A. In addition to the English version, Blaze Advisor Builder has been fully localized for the Japanese market.