Drools vs JBPM ? differences, pros and cons

Question

I'm looking for a good rule engine.

I've seen it exists two good projects : JBPM and Drools.

I don't really understand differences between the two and I don't know what is the ideal tool to use.

Please could you provide me more information and your experience with one or other and what do you think is the best to use to manage business rules.

Doubtless

Answer 1

jBPM is not a rule engine, it's a workflow engine. Drools is a rule engine. So Drools is what you're looking for.

Drools and jBPM are companion projects: they integrate really nicely if you need workflows with rules.

Socalled

Make sure what you want exactly? actually this answer is correct and a perfect one not the above one. So please do check – Gunnel

Hi @Geoffery i am just a starter to jbpm can you please suggest me some reference link to start with – Haemoglobin

Hey @srikanthr, I'm sharing a few links. 1.)mswiderski.blogspot.in/2015/10/… 2.)access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_JBoss_BPM_Suite/… – Kidron

Answer 2

Drools is a Rete rules engine that does forward and back induction. You can use it in a small setting for local decisions that only require a handful of rules OR something as large as an underwriting decision engine in insurance.

jBPM is an enterprise singleton that helps you to wire together interactions between humans and services into a state machine that fulfills a well-defined, complex business process. Think of the Mediator pattern in GoF.

I can see where jBPM might use a Rete rules engine to help with complex decisions in a business flow. There's nothing to stop me from embedding Drools in jBPM.

I would say they are complimentary, not an either/or choice.

Llanes

jBPM is an enterprise singleton? What do you mean with that? – Director

I might be presuming too much about jBPM and how it's deployed, but most enterprise service buses that I've seen are enterprise wide listeners that are used by several clients. It's not one per app. – Llanes

jBPM5 is very flexible and allows you to have multiple instances of the engine running at different layers depending what is your business scenarios, so there is no centralized instance of the engine. – Director

I thought about jBPM rather in categories of State Machine GoF pattern, however what are advantages and/or disadvantages of jBPM in comparison to Mediator pattern? – Tripe

Answer 3

jBPM is a workflow engine whereas Drools is a rule engine. Drools Flow will be merged in the project we call jBPM 5.

Ceroplastic

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. – Cyrene

Thanks . I will do proper in next time – Ceroplastic

Thanks for answer but it has already been answered about 2 years ago, saying exactly the same thing. Read accepted answer before replying ;) – Doubtless

Answer 4

It is not correct to say that Drools should only be used for a handful of rules. It is able to scale really well, at least at the time of this comment (version 7.5/6)

The whole point of drools and any other rules engine is the implementation of algorithms that optimize the execution of rules. Manageability of rules is proportional (if such a thing exists) to the design of the rules.

As the others have said, JBPM is not a rules engine but a workflow system that interops with drools naturally.

Unlimited