how to learn Drools or another rule engine fast

Question

Hi All,

We're embarking on a module which will generate some recommendations based on some criteria. The criteria will be in the form of set of Business Rules and hence I was considering using a Business Rule Engine like Drools(open source and java :-) )

we need to learn Drools fast (2-3 weeks) and be able to implement rules using JBoss Drools. Which articles, tutorials, books, best practices should we be following ?

Thank you,

BR,
~A

Answer 1

The Drools Documentation is really good:

http://www.jboss.org/drools/documentation.html

There are two books from PackIt publishing that aren't bad:

https://www.packtpub.com/drools-jboss-rules-5-0-developers-guide/book

https://www.packtpub.com/jboss-drools-business-rules/book

Here's a good article that discusses rule-engines in general:

http://www.infoq.com/articles/Rule-Engines

Answer 2

What joekutner said + a recent 1hr Fosdem "introduction" video. Despite the comments, it's actually really good, but what you have to have is the slides, so that you can follow through in a sane fashion.

It is fast, you'll have to pause, but I found that I was learning stuff at the 25 minute mark after having done a few days playing and reading drools docs.

I can't emphasise how good this was helping me get the "feel" of drools, and just how to use the power.