Case Studies
Outsourced Data Center
Business Challenge
The benefits of a well-constructed IT architecture for today’s businesses are tremendous. This is especially true in the emerging industry of outsourced data storage, where a company’s IT assets aren’t just the backbone of the operation, they’re also the product. Companies rely on these data centers to house their essential information. They need to be confident that their data is secure and can be accessed whenever needed.
A leading provider of information availability solutions based in Wayne, PA differentiates itself in the industry by enabling its customers to define their data storage solution, in terms of both what they store and how it is stored. Each of their customers has unique data storage needs, and as such the rules that govern their interaction with the host system differ as well. As a billion-dollar business with more than 10,000 customers, the volume of specialized rules that need to be created and managed is staggering.
Manually coding and updating the multitude of complex, customized rules is an insurmountable task. Numerous specialized rules servers are required to store and maintain the universal rule set. Therefore, the data center needs an asset management system to effectively manage the servers, and a rules engine to foster automated, client-driven rule generation and maintenance.
Engagement
The client engaged a team of open source experts from Chariot Solutions for their architectural expertise and to provide the high level design and technical implementation required for the project. After evaluating the client’s needs, Chariot determined that JBoss’ Drools 5.0 would be the ideal rules engine to power the system.
Drools is noted for its ability to exploit Declarative Programming for the purpose of business rules management. By allowing the user to dictate an objective without being constrained to a set process to achieve it, Drools enables more efficient, effective performance. Friendly to both developers and business users, the Drools web-based user interface (Guvnor) simplifies rule creation by allowing users to work in plain English rather than code.
Chariot worked to ensure that its client took full advantage of the benefits Drools could provide. As a result of Chariot’s efforts, a new module for Drools was developed to introduce ‘object traversal’. Developed through Java Persistence API (JPA) introspection, this custom functionality provides the ability to reason over any object in the system without having to assert each object into Drools working memory. Along with ‘object traversal’, Chariot automated the process by which the Guvnor rules repository is updated when a change to the object model has been detected.
The custom module employs the principles of ‘ontological engineering’ to clearly delineate the relationships between the clients’ objects and the rules that have been created to manage them. As the functionality that Chariot developed is a natural complement to the existing Drools product, JBoss is interested in introducing the module as an extension for the current version, and incorporating it as a core feature for the next release.
With the custom functionality developed by Chariot, the data center will be well-equipped to provide the control and customization of the rules that govern the data storage and access required by their clients.
Results
- Open source license makes Drools free to download, use, embed and distribute.
- The automation of the maintenance of client rules in the rules repository will be a tremendous time-saver for the data center.
- Greater system efficiency and agility due to Drools’ high level of de-coupling of data from the business logic that utilizes it.
- Simplified rule creation for the data center’s clients due to user interface that relies on plain English, rather than code.
