HYBRID USE OF RULE AND CONSTRAINT ENGINES

A method and apparatus that allow business users to dynamically add, modify, and delete business rules and associated constraints, and then to apply these changes in a very efficient manner without needing to recompile and/or restart e-business applications, is disclosed. According to one embodiment, hybrid use of the business rules and constraints with multiple decision-support engines provides the practical solution for the described problems. Rules are used to define the generic search space only, without needing to describe all special cases. Then an optimization (not rule-based) engine can automatically create and analyze all possible branches of the tree specified by the rules to select the best one. Because one universal rule engine is not sufficient to handle online decision support, in one embodiment there is a family of intelligent engines (including the rule engine) that can resolve the optimization problem generated automatically based on the applicable dynamic rules.