As corporations implement dynamic, distributed Web applications -- such as airline reservations, stock portfolio management and manufacturer scheduling systems -- it's essential for them to have the tools in place to implement and manage time-sensitive systems.

Many corporations, including British Airways PLC, Chrysler Corp. and Fidelity Investments, find that having a business rule automation engine is crucial.

Business rules are the software guidelines, or logic, under which a company's systems operate. A rule automation tool separates the rule component from an application, thereby allowing a company to quickly modify an existing system or build a new one.

"The only way large distributed systems can function and change is to have continuous, dynamic assembly of components," says Eric Brown, senior analyst with Forrester Research Inc. "Applications [running over the Internet or Intranet] are woven together on the fly and dynamically assembled from various servers."

The leaders in business rule automation tools, Neuron Data Inc. and Ilog Inc., recently released Java versions of their products. Both seek to complement their products with Java's ability to distribute application rules.

Neuron Data, which markets a rule automation tool called Elements, plans to support Java on the client side to allow its customers -- BankAmerica Corp., Fidelity Investments and SunQuest Information Systems Inc. -- to reach new markets and increase productivity.

SunQuest is evaluating Neuron Data's new Java-based rule engine, called Jewels, for use in a patient information system it's building for the health-care industry. When completed, the new SunQuest system will retrieve information from various databases to alert doctors when a patient's vital statistics change dramatically within a 24-hour period.

"We're building logic around content stored in three different systems and using Neuron's business rules automation engine to do analysis and deliver information in real-time," says Di Guo, senior software developer at SunQuest.

"Jewels offers a way to distribute rules and control them centrally" by allowing developers to create "Smartlets," or intelligent applets, says Mike Braun, president and chief executive officer at Neuron.

Jewels, which is available for download from Neuron's Web site, will be generally available in June and priced on a per-customer basis.

While Neuron's Java development resides on the client side, Ilog's new Ilog Rules for Java offers customers the ability to provide rule automation on either the client or server side.

"We hear customers want to do Java on the server," says Dave Taber, vice president of marketing at Ilog. "We don't want to force customers to make a choice early on between client and server side implementation."

Source: Inter@ctive Week