Hey Micheal,
Well as far as I know there is currently no book available for JBoss Rule.
As far as examples are concerns, I think the JBoss download files do provide a good set of examples.
Take a look at them and see if they answers to your questions.
You can also take a look at the
JBoss Rules Mailing list.
I will try to give answers to your questions as best. Please bear with me if something is not answered.
1. How to invoke the rules?
Just check the FibonacciExample.java in the JBoss Rules examples and you will find how to execute a rule.
2. Whether the rules can be configured as web services?
Yes, you can expose your rules a web services which can be consumed either by a
J2EE application or a .Net application.
3. Can be portable/configured in any application server like weblogic/websphere.. mean to say any appllication dependent is there?
No, I don't think there is any application server dependency. You can use JBoss Rule in any of J2EE application server. There might be some issues related to configuration.
4. How easily a non-technical team can use this compared to other rule engines?
Well, this all depends how you write your rules and how much comfortable a Business User is with the Rule Language. I believe most of the Business Rule Engine do provide a english like language and JBoss Rules is one of them. In the begining there might be a learning curve depending on the confort level of Business User.
5. What will be some of the disadvantages of selecting JBoss as a Rule Engine?
Well, if you want support and advance feature then the current version of JBoss Rule might not solve your problems. You can look at some commericial Business Rule Engines like ILOG, Blaze Advisor, PEGA for a comparision.
6. Whether the rules can be invoked only from Java/J2EE or we can able to use any language like .Net..?
Ideally you should be able to use any of these if you Rule Engine is providing Webservices for the rules. Again its all depends the Rule Engine capability. Some might provide it by default and in some case you might need to develop some adaptor kind of stuff.
7. How long it will take to learn it?
Diffcult question to answer. But if you know what a rule is and how to write it in a business language the learning curve might be smooth. It also depends on your comfort level.
8. Can we dynamically change the rules at runtime without deploying the application?
Yes, you can change. But again this is sepecific to Business Rule Engine.
9. Any forum like java ranch speciaaly dedicated to JBoss JRules?
http://xircles.codehaus.org/projects/drools/lists Hope this helps.
Let me know if case you have more questions.
Regards
Naveen