Incorporating Business Rule Engine Technology in Control Center Applications-Toward Adaptive IT solutions

Commercial business rule management systems (BRMS) are software designed to manage and process rules, usually expressed in "if (condition) then (actions)" format. BRMS enables a more open IT solution architecture where business logic can be changed quickly by business analysts without making any change to the applications that invoke the logic processing. This approach offers some obvious advantage over traditional approach where the logic is hardwired in the application programs. Due to the benefits BRMS brings, rule based IT solutions are gaining popularity in banking, financial market, federal government, and other business that have to frequently modify business logic in response to fast changing business and regulation policies. The use of BRMS in real time network management environment has been hindered by demanding performance requirement by mission critical applications. This paper presents the application of BRMS in control center applications using remedial action processing as an example and discusses the novel integration architecture to achieve both online performance target and adaptive solution.