<p>E-business provides important opportunities of trade for businesses, and the supporting business system must handle this environment efficiently. One current trend in business systems is to move business logic, such as business processes and business rules, out from the application logic and into separate support systems. The reason to make this separation is to increase the agility of the business, to make the system able to change more rapidly when the business situation changes.</p><p>This report focus on business rules enforced in business rule engines. Specific interest is on how such rule engines meet the requirements of the e-business domain. The report presents an overview of business rule engines. Five general categories of characteristics are proposed. The proposed characteristics are then used in a comparison of three business rule engines.</p>

E-business provides important opportunities of trade for businesses, and the supporting business system must handle this environment efficiently. One current trend in business systems is to move business logic, such as business processes and business rules, out from the application logic and into separate support systems. The reason to make this separation is to increase the agility of the business, to make the system able to change more rapidly when the business situation changes. This report focus on business rules enforced in business rule engines. Specific interest is on how such rule engines meet the requirements of the e-business domain. The report presents an overview of business rule engines. Five general categories of characteristics are proposed. The proposed characteristics are then used in a comparison of three business rule engines.