The Business Rule Engine (BRE) is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. Oracle, for instance, has Oracle Business Rules and IBM has the iLog Business Rule Management System (BRMS). Microsoft has their own rule engine that is shipped with the BizTalk Server and is also called the Business Rule Engine or the BRE for short. But, not only BizTalk has a rule engine, there is also the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) that has rule engine capabilities.
The BRE enables users, often referred to as business analysts, to directly create and modify sets of business rules. These rules are typically authored in the Business Rules Composer. With this tool, users can define a vocabulary for specifying the rules. A vocabulary is a collection of definitions consisting of friendly names for the facts used in rule conditions and actions. These definitions make the rules easier for users to read and understand. The vocabularies are stored...