Here's the problem; If you're into Rules, you've probably already downloaded the BRMS - ( Business Rules management system). If you're just a casual browser, as cool a GWT app it may be, but you're not going to download. Why? Unless you have Tomcat or JBoss 4 ready and waiting on your PC you're not going to bother (note ; this will work on other application servers like weblogic , with another couple minutes work, but that just proves my point).
In order to make things easy for us lazy people, the nice people at Drools are preparing a standalone BRMS; download , unzip , start and play. That's presuming you have Java installed. You do have Java installed don't you? But being lazy, how big a download is too big?
I'm not the best person to answer the question - I've already downloaded the (largish - 530mb) Red Hat Developer Studio (now at release candidate 1). So what's your download speed and how big (small) does the BRMS have to be before you'd consider trying it out?
Answers on a postcard below.

How big is too big - no question of size for me, but only of "installation impediments".
ReplyDeleteIf a 300MByte downloads plus some untar/unzip stuff works after less than 10-20min installation/configuration, it is ok for a technical thing like BRMS...
Most people I work with have flatrates and DSL nowadays...