Which business rule engine to use

We saw in the previous chapter that rules engines can be embedded in many places that you don’t expect (such as Excel and Outlook). There are hundreds of rule engine-like projects out there. So, how do we filter through these to pick one that can run the hands-on examples in this book? We’ll do this filtering based on the following criteria:

• We need a good user interface for editing rules, aimed at business users. This rules out Jess and Prolog, which are very powerful but need a lot of technical knowledge.
• The main focus of the product should be rules. For example, we’ll see other products later in the book that use workflows (for example, Microsoft Power Automate). These are great for doing steps in order but don’t have as powerful decision-making capabilities.
• Since you’re in learning or trying things out mode, you want it not only to be free to download but also free from hefty license costs in...