It is fundamental for us to understand why jBPM and Drools coexist under the KIE umbrella. The relationship between the two projects and the similarities they have make them share most tools and methodologies. These two projects complement each other, allowing end users to describe business knowledge using different paradigms and languages to model business scenarios. We will be able to choose the right tool for the job and then combine the power of the Rule world with the Process world.

This section will cover three of the most common patterns of rule and process integration. The main idea here is to open our mind to look for new alternatives to implement our business solutions.

We already learned in this chapter how to start new process instances by using the KIE APIs, but now we will see how we can interact with the process engine from within our rules.

In the next section we will learn how to interact with the Process engine from our rules. This will...