The rule agent is a Peer to Peer component for runtime deployment of rules/packages/rulebases (well,thats the vision). In practical terms, its a component you use in any system that requires rules (and the BRMS/IDE can also use it to deploy). There will be a deployment descriptor where you declare what rulebases are (by name) which you then access in code (one line of code), and how the rulebase is obtained/updated. Looking at some ideas for deployment config (using file, URI and JGroups respectively): <ruleBaseConfig> <cache dir="..dir for cold start /> <ruleBase name="myRulebaseFromDir"> <package name="pkg1"/> <package name="foo.bar.pkg"/> <directorySource dir=""> <poll minutes="10"/> </directorySource> </ruleBase> <ruleBase name="myRulebaseFromURL"> <package name="pkg1"/> <package name="foo.bar.pkg"/> <urlSource url="url to BRMS"> <poll minutes="10"/> </urlSource> </ruleBase> <!-- in this case the rulebase comes from a jgroup, the updates are near instant, no polling --> <ruleBase name="myRulebaseFromJGroup"> <package name="pkg1"/> <package name="foo.bar.pkg"/> <group name="production.group"/> </ruleBase> </ruleBaseConfig> And in the code you access it like: RuleBase rb = RuleAgent.instance().getRuleBase("myRulebaseFromJGroup"); ... etc... The rulebase will be updated when the rules are etc. Comments?