My husband and I recently bought a new car. Wasn’t the one we intended on buying, but we made a great choice based on our criteria. We both wanted a high mileage vehicle and were leaning toward a hybrid. My husband wanted to buy an American brand if possible and I wanted the lowest price I could get. In the end, though, it was performance that was the deciding factor. So we ended up with a non-hybrid, non-American car that was $2,000 more than I wanted to pay. BUT it was a high performance car with extraordinary mileage that was eligible for a $1500 tax credit for alternative fuel usage.
I occasionally get asked for performance metrics. I do have performance information provide, but it doesn’t really provide the apples to apples comparison I think people really want. The answer to the performance question really is “it depends.” Now, some may initially see this reply as a cop-out, but it is true. Execution performance is affected by the complexity of the rules, the intensity of the data processing, and the supporting server architecture, so every application is different. But more importantly, “performance” goes beyond execution. Rule authors care about performance of the authoring environment, which is affected by the rule application complexity and size. Rule management and integration have their own performance considerations as well.
With cars and Business Rule Technologies, the idea of performance goes beyond a single metric or test. When we began our car search, performance meant fuel efficiency. By the end of our search, our definition of performance had grown to reflect the lifecycle of using and owning the car and included not only fuel efficiency, but also anticipated maintenance costs and—to my surprise—acceleration. For Business Rules technology, the idea of performance often starts as a simple execution metric. But savvy buyers understand that performance is a many-faceted criterion and, more importantly, that rule-enabled applications can be architected differently to achieve the required performance metrics, from authoring through management and execution.
The moral of the story is: Think outside of the engine when considering a new vehicle or Business Rule Technology.