Chapter 2. Red Hat Decision Manager components

Red Hat Decision Manager is made up of Business Central and KIE Server.

  • Business Central is the graphical user interface where you create and manage business rules. You can install Business Central in a Red Hat JBoss EAP instance or on the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OpenShift).

    Business Central is also available as a standalone JAR file. You can use the Business Central standalone JAR file to run Business Central without deploying it to an application server.

  • KIE Server is the server where rules and other artifacts are executed. It is used to instantiate and execute rules and solve planning problems. You can install KIE Server in a Red Hat JBoss EAP instance, in a Red Hat JBoss EAP cluster, on OpenShift, in an Oracle WebLogic server instance, in an IBM WebSphere Application Server instance, or as a part of Spring Boot application.

    You can configure KIE Server to run in managed or unmanaged mode. If KIE Server is unmanaged, you must manually create and maintain KIE containers (deployment units). A KIE container is a specific version of a project. If KIE Server is managed, the Decision Manager controller manages the KIE Server configuration and you interact with the Decision Manager controller to create and maintain KIE containers.

    The Decision Manager controller is integrated with Business Central. If you install Business Central on Red Hat JBoss EAP, use the Execution Server page to create and maintain KIE containers. However, if you do not install Business Central, you can install the headless Decision Manager controller and use the REST API or the KIE Server Java Client API to interact with it.

  • Red Hat build of OptaPlanner is integrated in Business Central and KIE Server. It is a lightweight, embeddable planning engine that optimizes planning problems. Red Hat build of OptaPlanner helps Java programmers solve planning problems efficiently, and it combines optimization heuristics and metaheuristics with efficient score calculations.