Relativity Teams with ILOG for Business Rule Modernization

July 22, 2008 Alex Woodie

Relativity Technologies, a developer of tools to allow programmers to gain a better understanding of applications, has teamed up with ILOG, a developer of business rules management systems, to help customers modernize their legacy systems, the two vendors announced last week.

With its Modernization Workbench, Relativity is in the business of “knowledge mining.” The software enables owners of so-called “legacy” applications running on System i, System z, Unix, and Windows systems, to dig deep into the code to see how the various components of the application work and where the business logic is buried. After unearthing this crucial bit of information, organizations are better prepared to modernize or migrate their legacy apps.

ILOG, on the other hand, is in the business of business rules. In other words, ILOG develops products classified as business rule management systems (BRMS) that basically separate the execution and flow of business logic from the applications themselves. ILOG addresses one of the most pernicious problems of application modernization, which is the tendency to hard code business rules and logic into the legacy applications. By separating the rules, organizations are better prepared to incorporate their legacy applications in the new service orientated architectures (SOAs) of the future.

By integrating their respective tools–Modernization Workbench on Relativity’s side, and JRules and Rules for COBOL on ILOG’s side–the two companies hope to make it easier for users to extract business rules from legacy apps, and then rejuvenate those rules through more flexible, SOA-based BRMS services.

ILOG’s JRules works in Java environments, while Rules for COBOL works, as you might suspect, in COBOL environments. ILOG also develops BRMS products for managing business rules in Microsoft .NET and C++ applications, but these products are not part of the Relativity partnership.

Desmond Delandro, vice president for strategic alliances with ILOG, says this partnership has “clear value” for CIOs. “Now, organizations can shift from brittle, poorly understood applications to highly adaptable and maintainable systems, while leveraging the intellectual property invested in their existing application portfolio,” Delandro says.