The technology, code-named Dragonfly, promises developers more flexibility in building and maintaining business applications, particularly Web services.
Chris Atkinson, vice president of Microsoft's .Net Enterprise Server Product Management Group, would not address Dragonfly directly but said in general business rules engine technology is key to the Redmond, Wash., company's .Net strategy for delivering XML Web services.
"It's very strategic ... as you move to a point where you want to move beyond simple point-to-point [application interaction], and you want to start orchestrating a business process from partner A to partner B to partner C," Atkinson said during an interview at the Line56 Live Conference in New York. "Since you have longer-lasting transactions spanning multiple parties, what we want are different options, like if the answer is A, then go to this partner; if it's B, go to that partner. You need to start building those rules in so they more accurately reflect the more complex transactions."
Business rules engines enable enterprises to separate the business rules from the rest of the application code, so users can make modifications to business logic without touching the actual application code. This lets nonprogrammers make modifications, which is particularly important in Web services, where flexibility is a must.
"Essentially, what [a business rules engine] does is things like the orchestration technology in BizTalk Server," Atkinson said. "[The technology] allows business process analysts to sit down and define business rules, and then essentially those business rules get translated by BizTalk Server into an XML program that executes it into the data. So the business analyst doesn't have to go down into the bowels of writing XML code; the code essentially is generated from the business process server."
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