Hybrid use of rule and constraint engines

• US 20020198753A1
• Filed: 09/13/2001
• Published: 12/26/2002
• Est. Priority Date: 06/25/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Exigen Properties, Inc.
• Original Assignee: ORIX Growth Capital, LLC (ORIX Corporation)
• Inventors: Feldman, Jacob, Korolov, Alexander, Shor, Stanislav, Meshcheryakov, Semen
• Granted Patent: US 6,856,980 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 706/47
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/01 Dynamic search techniques; Heuristics; Dynamic trees; Branch-and-bound
• CPC Class Codes: G06N 5/022 Knowledge engineering; Knowledge acquisition
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 99/00 Subject matter not provided for in other groups of this subclass

Abstract

A method and apparatus that allow business users to dynamically add, modify, and delete business rules and associated constraints, and then to apply these changes in a very efficient manner without needing to recompile and/or restart e-business applications, is disclosed. According to one embodiment, hybrid use of the business rules and constraints with multiple decision-support engines provides the practical solution for the described problems. Rules are used to define the generic search space only, without needing to describe all special cases. Then an optimization (not rule-based) engine can automatically create and analyze all possible branches of the tree specified by the rules to select the best one. Because one universal rule engine is not sufficient to handle online decision support, in one embodiment there is a family of intelligent engines (including the rule engine) that can resolve the optimization problem generated automatically based on the applicable dynamic rules.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

defining a problem in terms of business rules; and

resolving the problem in terms of constraints.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the problem is specified by business rules and automatically generated and resolved as a constraint satisfaction problem.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein a rule language used to represent the business rules is extended with constraint programming constructs.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the rule language is mixed with the constraint programming constructs inside a rule template representation.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the rule template representation is an XML/Java template representation.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein online decision support with optimization facilities is added to a system that formerly processed the business rules only.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising providing for generation of two outputs, wherein a first output comprises rules presented in a rule language and a second output comprises a constraint satisfaction problem expressed in terms of a constraint programming language.

8. A machine-readable medium that provides instructions which, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising:

providing for automatic generation of a constraint satisfaction problem based on at least one business rule; and

providing for solution of the constraint satisfaction problem.

9. The machine-readable medium of claim 8, wherein a rule language used to represent business rules is extended with programming constructs associated with the constraint satisfaction problem.

10. The machine-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the rule language is mixed with the programming constructs inside a rule template representation.

11. The machine-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the rule template representation is an XML/Java representation with both rules and constraints.

12. The machine-readable medium of claim 8, wherein online decision support with optimization capabilities is added to a rules processing system.

13. The machine-readable medium of claim 8, wherein operations further comprise providing for generation of two outputs, wherein a first output comprises rules presented in a rule language and a second output comprises constraint satisfaction problems expressed in terms of a development environment for a constraint engine.

15. The apparatus of claim 14, wherein online decision support with optimization facilities is added to a system that processed the business rules only.

16. The apparatus of claim 14, further comprising a code generator coupled with the business application and the constraint engine to provide for generation of two outputs, wherein a first output comprises rules presented in a rule language and a second output comprises constraint satisfaction problems expressed in terms of a development environment for a constraint engine.

14. An apparatus comprising:

a business application to provide for automatic generation of a constraint satisfaction problem based on business rules; and

a constraint engine coupled with the business application to provide for solution of the constraint satisfaction problem.