Rule Studio is the development environment for business rule applications. It is integrated into Eclipse. Developers can take advantage of this integration to develop their Java projects along with rule projects. Developers and architects can therefore use Rule Studio to integrate and deploy the business rule application into their enterprise client application. 

Architects, developers and business analysts use Rule Studio to design the business rule application, author, review, and debug business rules. 

Rule Studio also has tools for keeping the rules synchronized with Rule Team Server. 

 

Architects are responsible for managing the overall deployment organization of the rules, and making sure that the execution of rulesets is optimized. 

In the context of business rule application development, architects are responsible for: 

 

Developers are responsible for the development, debugging, and deployment of business rule applications. They are familiar with object models, APIs, and the development environment (J2EE application servers or J2SE). 

In the context of business rule application development, developers are responsible for: 

Although the developer role can overlap with the business analyst role, the business analyst typically performs some limited tasks in both Rule Studio and Rule Team Server, whereas the developer mainly works in Rule Studio and uses the integration and extension APIs provided in JRules.  

 

Business analysts act as the bridge between business and IT departments, by smoothing the way as corporate policy moves from design to integration inside a software application. They translate the policy into a formal specification acceptable to developers, and validate the formal specification with policy managers.  

In the context of business rule application development, business analysts are responsible for:  

Depending on their level of technical knowledge, business analysts may perform tasks that are currently described as developer tasks. However, generally business analysts do not write code. 

 

Developers and architects create a rule project in Rule Studio. A rule project is a type of Eclipse project dedicated to the development of business rule applications. Business analysts work with business users and developers to define the vocabulary used in the business policy. This vocabulary is based on a business object model. Developers implement the business object model as a Java or XML implementation model. In some cases, the Java or XML object model exists already, and can be imported into JRules to generate the business object model and the vocabulary. Business analysts and developers also define and implement the additional rule properties required for managing and tracking business rules, using rule model extensions. Rule Studio provides editors for the business object model and the rule model extensions. 

 

Developers and architects define how they want the rules to be executed. In this rule project, they define the organization of the business rules into packages and their persistence in a Source Code Control (SCC) system. They also define a high-level flow of execution for the business rules. 

 

Developers and architects set up the tools to help rule authors write rules. To make business rule editing easier for business users, they may, for example, write some complex business rules, create business rule templates, and define business rule vocabulary categories. 

 

Developers use Rule Studio to perform static analysis on rules and make sure the initial set of rules they developed is consistent. 

 

Developers use Rule Studio to test and debug rule execution in a sandbox.