The JBoss Drools boys have something cool brewing. They already have the most useful GWT (Google Web Toolkit) App that I’ve seen outside of the Googleplex. That’s a fully fledged app ready and waiting to be used in anger, not some example widget, or a test case thrown together by somebody playing with the technology. The BRMS app itself, targeted at business / professional users, allows them to catch the knowledge that they have in their heads and share it with the team.
Here’s the problem; If you’re into Rules, you’ve probably already downloaded the BRMS – ( Business Rules management system). If you’re just a casual browser, as cool a GWT app it may be, but you’re not going to download. Why? Unless you have Tomcat or JBoss 4 ready and waiting on your PC you’re not going to bother (note ; this will work on other application servers like weblogic , with another couple minutes work, but that just proves my point).
In order to make things easy for us lazy people, the nice people at Drools are preparing a standalone BRMS; download , unzip , start and play. That’s presuming you have Java installed. You do have Java installed don’t you? But being lazy, how big a download is too big?
I’m not the best person to answer the question – I’ve already downloaded the (largish – 530mb) Red Hat Developer Studio (now at release candidate 1). So what’s your download speed and how big (small) does the BRMS have to be before you’d consider trying it out?
Answers on a postcard below.
