Services

Red Hat sponsors this Open Source project and employs its core developers. Additionally, Red Hat offers subscriptions for a fully supported product, Red Hat Decision Manager, based on Drools.

Red Hat has:

Solution Architects to implement POC’s
Consultants to help deliver reliable production implementations
A 24/7 support team

Community and product comparison

The community download delivers everything you would expect from an Open Source project, including all features. Both Red Hat Decision Manager and Red Hat Process Automation Manager are Red Hat products based on Drools. The subscription to these products fills the missing gaps for enterprise use. Both community and product use the same code base.

	Drools	Red Hat Decision Manager
Functionality
All features	Includes all enterprise features too
All bugfixes	Master branch only	Supported maintenance branches too
Documentation
Backport bugfixes to maintenance branches	Not released	Released in maintenance releases
Security (CVE) watch for maintenance branches	Eventually released from master branch only	Released as backported bugfix
Testing
Unit testing		On certification matrix
Integration testing		On certification matrix
Stress testing
Performance testing and sizing
QA certification		Cross matrix of OS’s, JDK’s, application containers, databases, … See supported configurations.
Help
Roadmap impact	Use our forum, issue tracker or send a Pull Request	Prioritized above community requests
Public questions	Use StackOverflow	Or call 24/7 support instead
Private 24/7 support		By web or phone, guaranteed response time (SLA)
Red Hat consultancy, training and POC assistance		Talk to your account manager
Release schedule
Beta/CR releases	Usually every few weeks	After Final community release
Stable releases	Final usually every 3 months	GA usually 2 months after community Final release (if it is productized)
Maintenance releases	Use latest Beta/CR instead	Usually every 6 weeks
One-off release for an urgent customer critical issue		Also rolled up in the next maintenance release
Information
Open source (Apache License 2.0)		but distribution available from customer portal only

Drools

Red Hat Decision Manager

Functionality

All features

Yes Includes all enterprise features too

Yes

All bugfixes

Yes Master branch only

Yes Supported maintenance branches too

Documentation

Yes

Backport bugfixes to maintenance branches

Not released

Yes Released in maintenance releases

Security (CVE) watch for maintenance branches

Eventually released from master branch only

Yes Released as backported bugfix

Testing

Unit testing

Yes

Yes On certification matrix

Integration testing

Yes

Yes On certification matrix

Stress testing

Yes

Performance testing and sizing

Yes

QA certification

Yes Cross matrix of OS’s, JDK’s, application containers, databases, … See supported configurations.

Help

Roadmap impact

Yes Use our forum, issue tracker or send a Pull Request

Yes Prioritized above community requests

Public questions

Yes Use StackOverflow

Yes Or call 24/7 support instead

Private 24/7 support

Yes By web or phone, guaranteed response time (SLA)

Red Hat consultancy, training and POC assistance

Yes Talk to your account manager

Release schedule

Beta/CR releases

Yes Usually every few weeks

Yes After Final community release

Stable releases

Yes Final usually every 3 months

Yes GA usually 2 months after community Final release (if it is productized)

Maintenance releases

Use latest Beta/CR instead

Yes Usually every 6 weeks

One-off release for an urgent customer critical issue

Yes Also rolled up in the next maintenance release

Information

Open source (Apache License 2.0)

Yes

Yes but distribution available from customer portal only

Subscribers have access to the product maven repository, with the productized binaries. To migrate from the community to product binaries, simply add the customer maven repository and adjust the version numbers to include the -redhat suffix.

Product overview

KIE functionality overview

Drools is a fully supported component (called Decision Manager) of the following products:

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