In ILOG Rules for .NET, developers store and access business rules using ILOG Rule Studio for .NET. To provide access for business users to the rule store, you can use file sharing systems, such as ILOG Rule Team Server for SharePoint. Rule Team Server allows business users to take advantage of the collaborative work features of Windows SharePoint Services, such as versioning, discussion boards, and file locking, and developers are free to integrate and test rules in a controlled environment.

Rule Team Server stores business rules on Windows SharePoint Services as documents (called RuleDocs) in rule document libraries. RuleDocs are managed using the Windows SharePoint Services source code control (SCC) system.

You can also store RuleDocs, which can be edited using Rule Solutions, in a file system that is independent of Rule Team Server. This means, however, that you cannot take advantage of the collaboration features of Windows SharePoint Services.

Rule Studio stores business rules and other business rule artifacts (such as business object models) in a file system accessed from Visual Studio .NET. Developers can use third-party SCC systems, such as Visual SourceSafe®, that are integrated into the Visual Studio .NET environment to manage these artifacts.

Simplifying Rule Editing for Business Users

When you have a large vocabulary, categories let you filter the terms and phrases that are available to you when you edit rules in Rule Studio or Rule Team Server. Only those vocabulary terms and phrases in a category are visible in a business rule with that category assigned.

Adding Custom Properties to Rule Artifacts

To add properties to existing types of rule artifact, you extend the rule model. BAL and rule model extensions can be set up once and then deployed on both Rule Studio and Rule Team Server.

For example, you could create a property geography to identify the country for which a rule is applicable.

Synchronizing Work Between Business and IT Users

Rule Studio provides a mechanism for ensuring that the rule projects in Rule Studio are synchronized with the RuleDocs stored on a file sharing system such as Rule Team Server. The Rule Team Server repository handles multi-user concurrency and versioning. In Rule Team Server, all users collaborate within a shared workspace, and use locking to control access to resources currently being edited.

Conflicts can occur between the two rule stores when, for example, the same business rule is modified in both rule stores. The developer handles such conflicts using the Publish Wizard and Update Wizard during the publish and update operations.

Synchronization provides for:

The way you implement business rule management with Rule Studio and Rule Team Server depends on who the owners of the business policy are, and whether you use the Rule Team Server repository as production storage.

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