Introduction

Out of box the business rules engine (BRE) is offered as either stand-alone .NET-compliant class library that includes a number of modules, support components, and tools or as component within your BizTalk solution enabling you to apply business rules to your processes (i.e. orchestrations). BRE implements the Rete algorithm, which is an efficient pattern matching algorithm for implementing production rule systems, and provides forward chaining execution. Forward chaining is one of the two main methods of reasoning when using inference rules (in artificial intelligence). This article will give you an overview of all relevant available resources regarding BRE to enable you to build robust solution with BRE.

Walkthroughs

On MSDN BizTalk Server 2010 you will find the following walkthroughs:

• Walkthrough: Creating a Simple Business Policy
• Walkthrough: Testing the Policy
• Walkthrough: Invoking the Policy from an Orchestration
• Walkthrough: Creating and Using a Vocabulary in the Policy
• Walkthrough: Adding a Rule to the Policy
• Walkthrough: Modifying the Policy
• Walkthrough: Tracking Policy Execution
• Walkthrough: Deploying the Policy
• Walkthrough: Executing the Policy Programmatically
• Walkthrough: Creating a Fact Creator
• Walkthrough: Using Database and .NET Facts

Code Samples

Microsoft BizTalk Server includes several business rules samples in its software development kit (SDK). The following samples can be found:

• Business Rules Hello World1 (BizTalk Server Sample).
• Business Rules Hello World2 (BizTalk Server Sample).
• Loans Processing Using Business Rules (BizTalk Server Sample).
• Medical Claims Processing and Testing Policies (BizTalk Server Sample).

The following code samples can be found at CodeProject:

• Very Sweet and Simple Sample of BRE
• Developing with the Microsoft Business Rule Engine

Articles

There are a couple of article written on BizTalk BRE you can read online. The following articles can be read online:

• Programming with the Microsoft Business Rules Framework
• Exposing Business Rules Engine as a WCF Service 10 (Hotrod 4)
• BizTalk Rule Engine, a practical application (Hotrod 6)

Books

• BizTalk Server 2010 Unleashed

Webcasts

There are a couple of webcasts on BRE:

• Using the BizTalk Business Rules Engine: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices
• Integrating Business Rules in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006
• Tracking Rules Execution in a .NET Application
• Calling Business Rules from a .NET Application
• Publishing a Business Rules Policy as a Service

Blog posts

There are several good blog posts available online. The following is a list of BRE blog posts:

• Business Rule Engine (BRE) blog
• Microsoft Business Rule Framework blog posts by Charles Young
• Validating Incoming Data Using the BizTalk Business Rules Engine

See Also

• MSDN Creating and Using Business Rules
• Comparison between Windows Workflow Foundation and BizTalk Server
• MSDN Virtual Lab: BizTalk Server 2010: Integrating Business Rules