Rule Evaluation and Execution

Information from enterprise applications and other sources flows into TIBCO BusinessEvents through channels as messages.

Messages represent the events that TIBCO BusinessEvents processes based on event definitions (event types). Events can be filtered (ignored), preprocessed into concepts or cached concepts, or asserted into the rule engine's working memory.

In an inference agent, all the rules whose conditions match information in the events (as well as concepts, if specified in the rule conditions) are assembled into a rule agenda and the first rule executes. If a rule successfully executes, its rule actions create and modify the objects in working memory. The rule agenda is derived from an internal runtime memory structure known as a Rete network (because it uses a derivative of the Rete algorithm).

TIBCO BusinessEvents rule engine is a forward-chaining inferencing engine. Every time the facts (concepts, score cards, and events) in its working memory change — due to rule actions or the arrival of new events — the inferencing engine updates the rule agenda. As a result, new rules are available to execute while others are now unavailable. The selection of which rule to execute first from a choice of several is called conflict resolution. The agenda process repeats until there is no more new information to process. This is known as RTC, or run to completion.