Research On Rule-based Software Architecture

In recent years, Software Architecture (SA) has become one of the hotspots of the research of Software Engineering and also one of the key techniques during the development of the large software system. The structure and specification of a whole system become more and more important; along with the scale of software system becomes bigger and more complex. The developers gradually realize the importance of the SA during the procedure of development. SA is an effective method on transition from requirement to realization, and software patterns offered an impactful approach for the reuse of successful solution.The purpose of Semantic Web's research is to provide a kind of semantic support for computation platform, express information that computer can understand, enable semantic interaction between human and computers conveniently, and realize automation. According the lucubrating on Semantic Web, rule engine technology arouses people's attention again and will play an incomparable role in the information system. Rule engine technology deals the business logic as structural object, transforms the complex business logic into simple rules, and divides business logic from the realization of the system. That makes little influence to the system when the logic changes. And the System can real-time apply these changes into the business transact.This paper aims at the need of large scale and complex business processes of current software system, focuses on formalizing the logical description and disposal of business flow and logic. According to the delamination in SA and representation of the logic in AI area and the theories of the rules layer in Semantic Web, this paper uses business rules to store the business logic, takes logic out of the source code, and implements the representation of formalization to business flow and logic. Based on the formalization of business logic, Mandarax, a Java rule engine, is introduced for consequence of the business rules. The formalization of business logic also provides support for dynamic reconfiguration of business process.The SA as a reusable system architecture integrates the main research achievement of the paper, which builds the rule layer using Prova, implements the reasoning process of business logic. Finally, the Rule-based software system architecture is proved to be feasible and effective, more fit to improve the reusablity and maintenance of software, and more complete in the theory level of software engineering design technique to some extent.