Consolidate WebSphere ILOG jrules with IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition

Introduction: Automatic decision making is becoming more and more important in the content management system. The external decision logic in the core application logic can be managed according to the dynamic business requirements and quickly modify the business rules. IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules is a business Rule management system (BRMS) that has many capabilities to make, deploy, and manage business rules that managers can make better, faster decisions. The consolidation of IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules and IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition expands the scope of content management solutions to manage business decisions more effectively in an organization.

This article first describes the method for consolidating IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition with IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules. Then the event framework is outlined, the ILOG JRules Business Rule Management system is briefly introduced, and a loan scenario is used to illustrate how to develop a custom event processor to integrate ILOG JRules into a content management application.

Introduction

Automatic decision making is becoming more and more important in the content management system. However, for the ever-increasing use cases, embedding decision rules in one application may not meet the complex needs of a rapidly evolving business environment. Therefore, it becomes very important to have a specialized business rule management system that supports business rule modeling, rule execution, and rule management.

IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules is a business Rule management system (BRMS) that provides business rule creation, deployment, and management capabilities that support business agility and efficiency. The consolidation of ILOG JRules and IBM Content manager Enterprise Edition Version 8.4.2 (hereinafter called Content Manager) is based on an event framework. This consolidation extends Content Manager functionality to enable more efficient business decision management in an organization.

Content Manager supports an event infrastructure that can integrate external applications. This article describes how to develop a custom event handler that is driven by business logic that interacts with ILOG JRules.

This article outlines the Content Manager event framework and introduces the ILOG JRules Business Rule Management system. Then use an example loan application scenario to illustrate how to develop a custom event handler for the consolidated ILOG JRules and Content Manager.

Understanding the Content Manager Event framework

Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of an event framework that supports Content Manager and external application consolidation.

Figure 1. Event Framework Architecture

As shown in the figure above, the event framework implements 3 main features:

Event subscriptions allow the user to determine a project type and the events associated with the project. During event subscription, event subscription data is stored in the configuration table of the Content Manager Library server database. Configuration data is managed by using the Content Manager system to manage client configuration. The administrator subscribes to these events and then monitors them for a specific project type and its attributes.

Event monitoring records events as they occur, generates event messages, and then sends messages to a Java message Service (JMS) queue. Event monitoring focuses on generating event messages. By using the Content Manager's java® and C + + API interfaces, applications can interact with the library server and save the generated data to the database. The library server logs these events according to configuration when the event occurs. The logged events are logged to an event queue table in the library server database. An event contains the event type, event ID, project information, and property data. The event Monitor can remove event data from the event queue table based on configuration data, convert the event to a JMS message, and then put the JMS message back into a JMS event queue.

Event processing queries the event messages from the JMS queue and then processes the messages based on business logic. Event handling focuses on the use of event messages. The event handler reads the JMS message containing the event data from the JMS queue. Event handlers can integrate application logic into the Content Manager document properties. Processing a consolidated event handler is provided by the Content manager that supports FileNet Business process Manager, but if you want to consolidate other applications, you must develop a custom event handler.