Decision Management (ODM,ADS)

Hi

Can you qualify customisations allowed for hosting decision center on cloud as our client  has customisations for decision center e.g. Workflow session controllers, custom value providers, custom renderers etc .. The documentation appears to be ambiguous in regard to hosting any customisations of ODM on cloud.

Thanks
Jatin

Customization of the Decision Center that requires a repackaging of the application is not supported in ODM on Cloud.
None of the customization you are listing can be used in this environment

Hi Alain,

Just as a follow-up to Jatin's question. We understand that repackaging Decision Center and Decision Server customized WAR files is not supported in container environments.  But there is ODM documentation in relation to extending Business Console in a Certified Kubernetes Environment ( Customizing the Decision Center Business console - IBM Documentation ) to enable functionality such as a custom value editor.  Is there more information available about the further level of additional customisation available and any further detail on how to technically implement it? 

 Also, if there is a requirement to maintain our existing customisations but to move forward into adoption and deployment in a container environment.  Is there guidance and a support statement available for the possibility of rolling our own containers, testing and validating them and deploying these to a Certified Kubernetes Environment?

Thanks

  Peter

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Peter Brennan
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I was talking about ODM on Cloud specifically because those instances are managed by IBM no customization is possible.

As you noticed ODM on Containers does support customization for Decision Center only. Customization documented in this section are supported: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/odm/8.11.0?topic=center-customizing.
There is no customization restricted by design in Decision Center itself, only the packaging of the image may impact and limit the customization. The 3 customization listed in the documentation have been validated. 

In the situation where you would create your own images and deploy in Kubernetes then you would be supported as an on premise user.  Kubernetes setup and configuration would be out of the scope of ODM support.  This statement applies:
https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/operational-decision-manager-support-statement-virtual-environments

We provide docker templates here https://github.com/DecisionsDev/odm-ondocker to get started with images that works. 

Hi Jatin,

It is a big limitation not being able to customize ODM on the cloud, or for that matter, IBM Automation Decision Services (ADS). Without the Decision Center customization as shown in the Rule Authoring Extensions for Decision Center, it is not possible to deliver a full rule authoring environment for business users and have business rules "under business jurisdiction" (see definition of a business rule in the OMG SBVR standard).  

If you decide to use ODM on Premises which supports what you want, there are a some tools in ODM Accelerator, including a Maven plug-in for repackaging the Decision Center web archive, and an configurable ODM Rule Designer and Decision Center extension for creating Value Editors and Dynamic Domains from external sources. Using them will accelerate everything you do around ODM and make it easier and cleaner to use.

Do let me know if I can be of any help. You can reach out to me at peterwarde@rulearchitect.com.

PS If you want to understand more about the need for Decision Center customization see my LinkedIn article Using Reference Data for Rule Authoring in IBM Operational Decision Manager. which you can also find in the IBM Automation Community.

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Peter Warde
peterwarde@rulearchitect.com
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