Chapter 31. About Red Hat Decision Manager

Red Hat Decision Manager is an open source decision management platform that combines business rules management, complex event processing, Decision Model & Notation (DMN) execution, and Red Hat build of OptaPlanner for solving planning problems. It automates business decisions and makes that logic available to the entire business.

Business assets such as rules, decision tables, and DMN models are organized in projects and stored in the Business Central repository. This ensures consistency, transparency, and the ability to audit across the business. Business users can modify business logic without requiring assistance from IT personnel.

Red Hat Process Automation Manager is made up of Business Central and KIE 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. KIE Server provides the runtime environment for business assets and accesses the data stored in the assets repository (knowledge store).
  • Business Central is the graphical user interface where you create and manage business rules that KIE Server executes.

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

Red Hat JBoss Web Server is an enterprise ready web server designed for medium and large applications, based on Tomcat. Red Hat JBoss Web Server provides organizations with a single deployment platform for Java Server Pages (JSP) and Java Servlet technologies, PHP, and CGI.

On a Red Hat JBoss Web Server installation, you can install KIE Server and the headless Decision Manager controller. Alternatively, you can run the standalone Business Central JAR file.

The instructions in this document explain how to install Red Hat Decision Manager in a Red Hat JBoss Web Server instance.

For instructions on how to install Red Hat Decision Manager in other environments, see the following documents:

For information about supported components, see the following documents:

31.1. 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.

    On a Red Hat JBoss Web Server installation, you can install KIE Server and the headless Decision Manager controller. Alternatively, you can run the standalone Business Central JAR file.

31.2. Red Hat Decision Manager roles and users

To access Business Central or KIE Server, you must create users and assign them appropriate roles before the servers are started. You can create users and roles when you install Business Central or KIE Server.

If both Business Central and KIE Server are running on a single instance, a user who is authenticated for Business Central can also access KIE Server.

However, if Business Central and KIE Server are running on different instances, a user who is authenticated for Business Central must be authenticated separately to access KIE Server. For example, if a user who is authenticated on Business Central but not authenticated on KIE Server tries to view or manage process definitions in Business Central, a 401 error is logged in the log file and the Invalid credentials to load data from remote server. Contact your system administrator. message appears in Business Central.

This section describes Red Hat Decision Manager user roles.

Note

The admin, analyst, and rest-all roles are reserved for Business Central. The kie-server role is reserved for KIE Server. For this reason, the available roles can differ depending on whether Business Central, KIE Server, or both are installed.

  • admin: Users with the admin role are the Business Central administrators. They can manage users and create, clone, and manage repositories. They have full access to make required changes in the application. Users with the admin role have access to all areas within Red Hat Decision Manager.
  • analyst: Users with the analyst role have access to all high-level features. They can model projects. However, these users cannot add contributors to spaces or delete spaces in the Design → Projects view. Access to the Deploy → Execution Servers view, which is intended for administrators, is not available to users with the analyst role. However, the Deploy button is available to these users when they access the Library perspective.
  • rest-all: Users with the rest-all role can access Business Central REST capabilities.
  • kie-server: Users with the kie-server role can access KIE Server REST capabilities.