What rule engine should I use? [closed]

Question

What are some of the best or most popular rule engines? I haven't settled on a programming language, so tell me the rule engine and what programming languages it supports.

Answer 1

I am one of the authors of Drools, I will avoid pimping my wares.

But some other options are Jess (not open source) but uses the clips syntax (which we also support a subset of) - which is kinda a lisp dialect.

It really depends what you want it for, Haley have strong Natural language tech (and they recently aquired RuleBurst - who has also interesting natural language tech which could deal with word documents with embedded rules - eg legal documentation). RuleBurst was able to target .Net runtimes as well (there is a Drools.net "port" available as well - I haven't seen what it has been up to lately, alas, not enough time). Ok I will put my pimp bling away now... sorry about that.

Answer 2

This is a great article by Martin Fowler, which is a discussion about when rules engines can be useful. You may find it helpful.

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/RulesEngine.html