Deploying Rules in Non-Excel Environments

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Running Rule Sets Outside of Excel

All of the examples so far have shown the application running in an Excel environment.

ARulesXL also supports export and distributable runtime features that allow rule sets to be deployed in environments other than Excel (in the Professional Edition). These include Java, .NET, and Delphi, but interfaces can be provided for other software packages as well, such as Extend and Visio. Further, the rules can be deployed on Windows, Unix, or other operating systems.

ARulesXL Runtime Architecture

The ARulesXL menu item Export generates a binary file containing the rules and associated constant data.

The ARulesXL runtime can then be distributed with that binary file for integration into other application contexts.

The ARulesXL API provides function calls that let you input tables to the rule engine, much like RArray() does, and calls that let you query the engine, much like RQuery(). The output from the queries is formatted for the particular environment.

For this example, the input loan data might be in a database. An application could read that data, assert it to the rule engine and then call the rule engine to get resale information. The application would then display or use those results as required.

For example, if the array query version of the sample application was exported, a .NET application could:

• read a database of loans
• assert the loans through the API
• use the API to query the rules
• get back the results formatted in an array
• use the array as required

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