When you add business rules to a BPEL process, Oracle JDeveloper creates a decision component to control and run the business rules using the Business Rule Service Engine.

A decision component consists of the following:

• Rules or Decision Tables that are evaluated using the Rules Engine. These are defined using Rules Designer and stored in a business rules dictionary.

• A description of the facts required for specific rules to be evaluated and the decision function to call. Each ruleset that contains rules or Decision Tables is exposed as a service with facts that are input and output, and the name of an Oracle Business Rules decision function. The facts are exposed through XSD definitions when you define the inputs and outputs for the business rule. A decision function is stored in an Oracle Business Rules dictionary. For more information, see Designing Business Rules with Oracle Business Process Management.

• A web service wraps the input, output, and the call to the underlying Business Rule service engine.

  This web service lets business processes assert and retract facts as part of the process. In some cases, all facts can be asserted from the business process as one unit. In other cases, the business process can incrementally assert facts and eventually consult the rule engine for inferences. Therefore, the service supports both stateless and stateful interactions.

  You can create a variety of such decision components.

  For more information, see Designing Business Rules with Oracle Business Process Management.