Tim Bass
11-21-2008 02:43 PM
Paul Vincent of TIBCO wrote an outstanding post, The Value of (Production) Rules ... Paul correctly notes:
In summary, of course,* event-processing rules, event-driven rules, and rules for business decisions can all overlap, depending on the application.
By coincidence, I was reading an excellent paper recently, [Reactive Rules on the Web.](http://rewerse.net/publications/download/REWERSE-RP-2007-031.pdf) In this Springer-Verlag paper, the distinguished ILOG and University of Munich authors*(Bruno Berstel, Philippe Bonnard, Francois Bry, Michael Eckert and Paula-Lavinia Patranjan) say;
[Both] Event-Condition-Action (ECA) rules and production rules fall into the category of reactive rules, which are used for programming rule-based, reactive systems.
In other words, ECA rules and production rules are both a type of reactive rule, according to the literature.
Recently I read a blog post where the author hoped to distinguish between BRMS and CEP; citing a BRMS as a �production rule system� and CEP as a �reactive rule system�.** This distinction does not appear to work because production rules are also reactive rules, according to the literature.
If you are interested in event processing rules, I highly recommend Reactive Rules on the Web.