Decisions vs Drools

Decisions is a business process automation and orchestration platform for coordinating workflows, systems, business rules, people, and AI. Teams can build workflows visually and apply rules to govern how processes and decisions run. AI agents can operate within those workflows alongside approvals, human oversight, and process visibility. Process intelligence tools help monitor performance, spot inefficiencies, and improve processes and decisions. The platform lists integrations including Salesforce, Microsoft 365, Slack, Jira, SAP SQL Anywhere, and OpenAI. It also supports REST and SOAP APIs, database connections, OpenAPI and Swagger imports, and custom connectors through its SDK. Deployment options include cloud, hybrid, and on-premise. Decisions lists Android, iOS, web, Windows, API, and self-hosted platforms. A free plan is available, while pricing is on request. Foundation, Growth, and Enterprise plans are listed, with custom limits, advanced security, and dedicated support available on a custom plan.

Drools is a free, open-source rule engine for building expert systems with forward- and backward-chaining inference. Its DMN engine supports Conformance level 3, covering the features in that standard, and can statically analyze decision tables for gaps and overlaps. For event processing, it reasons over streams using temporal operators, sliding windows, and event expiration. Developers can define rules in DRL text files alongside Java code, or use Excel decision tables, rule templates, or a Java executable model API. Rule units organize rules with typed containers for input data, and Kogito can generate REST endpoints from them. Drools rules can also be called by a BPMN business rule task in jBPM within the same service. Apache KIE states that the DMN engine passes 99.9% of DMN TCK tests as of version 10.2.0. The project is available for API, Linux, and self-hosted use at free. Getting started requires an IDE, JDK 21 or 17, and Maven 3.9 or later. Apache KIE is undergoing incubation and has not yet been fully endorsed by the ASF.