Business rules are the key day-to-day policies, constraints and know-how that, for example, allow insurance companies to determine premiums, telecommunication carriers to determine call spends and banks to authorize credit. As such, business rules are one of an organisation's most valuable, yet least leveraged assets. They are strategic to the successful operation of all organisations.

Common Knowledge provides both developers and business-users with the means to define, manage and modify the business logic behind complex applications by altering the rules alone. Common Knowledge gives you the power to change the rules without resorting to costly changes in application code so the whole business can work as a team.

• In keeping with the Common Knowledge philosophy, that no single format can adequately represent all business rule requirements, Common Knowledge 4.0 includes a range of new rule formats and features that move business rules management well and truly into the 21st century.

In addition to the traditional decision tables, decision grids, decision trees, workflows, rete rules and scripting formats, Common Knowledge 4.0 delivers a new world of opportunity with the introduction of visual scripts and test suites. These new formats, in conjunction with existing formats, ensure that the business rules designer has a rich set of tools available for the construction of expressive and effective corporate solutions.

Business rules built using Common Knowledge Designer can be integrated directly into your software systems using the Common Knowledge SDK. The Common Knowledge SDK is a comprehensive business rules authoring and execution API which now provides 32 and 64 bit support for all .NET languages, as well as native 32 and 64 bit support for all major versions of Delphi, including XE2.

Common Knowledge 4.0 can be downloaded from the evaluation download page on the Object Connections website. The Common Knowledge 4.0 Evaluation download is a fully functional Corporate Bundle installer.

What's New?

Common Knowledge 4.0 introduces a range of new and improved features. These include:

- Many UI improvements, including a versatile ribbon toolbar and improved docking control
- Optional tabbed and MDI based views
- Embedded viewers for documentation and code generation
- Integrated file and samples browsing
- Visual Script rule format allows integration of forms with business rules
- Test Suite rule format allows the integration of test cases and scenarios
- Common Knowledge Launcher, a standalone business rules execution micro-server
- SDK support for 32 and 64 bit .NET and Delphi environments
- Support for all major versions of Delphi including XE2
- A flexible pricing model with free SDK runtimes