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Updated Oct 6 2008: fixed bad links and added more links

Barbara Von Halle is a true pioneer in the discipline of business rules. She started with a series of important articles about business rules in Database Programming and Design magazine in the early 1990s and then just kept going. She founded Knowledge Partners International in 1996.

The AAAI seems to be rumbling to life. An extended quote from their call for participation in the upcoming AAAI 2008 Spring Symposium Series ( with a few explanatory links inserted ):

Updated Sept 17 2008: new links

One of the great contributions to the world of business rules in the last decade is the OMG Model Driven Architecture for Business Rules. The OMG link will take you to a page listing several formats for the article. I suggest using the PDF format for Business Semantics of Business Rules, it's about 240K. They also have MS Word and RTF formats.

Some more definitions from Haley. [  Note: Haley has a new set of definitions, not not those on this page.  I like the old set of definitions much more than the new ones ].

I left in Haley's product blurbs because I think they are largely true - their list of features can be used like a checklist for evaluating other rule engines.   Haley

From a Wikipedia discussion about Osterwalder, Pigneur and Tucci's definition of the term business model (sightly reformatted to make the nine "building blocks" more visible ):

Do business rules need to be rigidly enforced ?

Advances in information technology in the last 20 years have made it easier to purchase products and services. Although the impact of information technology has been stunning, I doubt if many customers would assert that technology has made it easier to deal with rigid customer support policies and processes, quite the opposite. It can take months to correct a business process or system processing error. This is often the result of overly constrained systems that cannot adapt to changing customer requirements or circumstances.

A terse refutation of the 10 top reasons given for not using a business rules approach, not necessarily good reasons of course.

The usual suspects include such classics as "it didn't run fast on our 486 66Mz computer in 1988" and "our rules are too complex for a rule engine [ god help'em ]" and eight other great excuses for procedural determinism.

Actually, it's not ten reasons, only nine - see item #6.

From the Oracle Business Rules fact sheet:

The Oracle Business Rules components consist of a Rules engine; a Rules SDK, and a Rule Author Tool. The Oracle Rules Engine is written in Java. It is fast and efficient and well integrated with both Java and XML.

The most classic and complete definition of business rules from the Business Rules Group ( blockquoted in toto, all rights gratefully acknowledged ).

Article 1. Primary Requirements, Not Secondary

1.1. Rules are a first-class citizen of the requirements world.
1.2. Rules are essential for, and a discrete part of, business models and technology models.

Note first that there is a big difference between The Semantic Web to A Semantic Web. In this version of the Semantic Web, knowledge shared by individuals. A web would be owned by its participants or subscribers rather the general public, something to be actively joined, perhaps more like the basic model of a Wiki than an openly accessible public site.