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Drools VS Apache Airflow

Compare Drools VS Apache Airflow and see what are their differences

Drools logo Drools

Drools introduces the Business Logic integration Platform which provides a unified and integrated platform for Rules, Workflow and Event Processing.

Apache Airflow logo Apache Airflow

Airflow is a platform to programmaticaly author, schedule and monitor data pipelines.
  • Drools Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16
  • Apache Airflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-17

Drools features and specs

  • Declarative Programming Model
    Drools uses a rule-based approach, allowing you to specify what the desired outcome is rather than detailing the control flow to achieve it. This can simplify complex decision-making logic and make the codebase easier to understand and maintain.
  • Separation of Business Logic
    It separates business rules from application code, which makes the rules easier to modify, understand, and manage without needing to redeploy the entire application.
  • Flexibility and Adaptability
    Drools allows for real-time decision-making changes. Business users can adjust the rules dynamically based on changing requirements, increasing the system's responsiveness to business needs.
  • Integration with Java
    As a Java-based rules engine, Drools integrates seamlessly with Java applications, making it a versatile choice for Java developers.
  • Comprehensive Toolkit
    Drools provides a rich set of features including a web-based interface for authoring and managing rules, decision tables, a rules repository, and more, providing a comprehensive toolkit for rule management.

Possible disadvantages of Drools

  • Complexity
    The learning curve for Drools can be steep for beginners or those unfamiliar with rule-based systems. It requires a good understanding of both the Drools framework and rule-based logic.
  • Performance Overhead
    In some scenarios, especially with a large number of complex rules, performance issues may arise. Fine-tuning and optimization may be necessary to ensure acceptable performance levels.
  • Debugging and Testing
    Debugging and testing rules can be challenging because the flow of control is not explicitly defined in the code. Specialized testing strategies and tools may be required to ensure rule correctness.
  • Dependency Management
    Drools, being a Java library with many dependencies, can add complexity to project setup and dependency management, especially in large projects.
  • Limited Support for Non-Java Environments
    Drools is primarily designed for Java environments, which can limit its applicability in projects using other languages. Integration with non-Java environments can be cumbersome.

Apache Airflow features and specs

  • Scalability
    Apache Airflow can scale horizontally, allowing it to handle large volumes of tasks and workflows by distributing the workload across multiple worker nodes.
  • Extensibility
    It supports custom plugins and operators, making it highly customizable to fit various use cases. Users can define their own tasks, sensors, and hooks.
  • Visualization
    Airflow provides an intuitive web interface for monitoring and managing workflows. The interface allows users to visualize DAGs, track task statuses, and debug failures.
  • Flexibility
    Workflows are defined using Python code, which offers a high degree of flexibility and programmatic control over the tasks and their dependencies.
  • Integrations
    Airflow has built-in integrations with a wide range of tools and services such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Apache Hadoop, making it easier to connect to external systems.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Airflow

  • Complexity
    Setting up and configuring Apache Airflow can be complex, particularly for new users. It requires careful management of infrastructure components like databases and web servers.
  • Resource Intensive
    Airflow can be resource-heavy in terms of both memory and CPU usage, especially when dealing with a large number of tasks and DAGs.
  • Learning Curve
    The learning curve can be steep for users who are not familiar with Python or the underlying concepts of workflow management.
  • Limited Real-Time Processing
    Airflow is better suited for batch processing and scheduled tasks rather than real-time event-based processing.
  • Dependency Management
    Managing task dependencies in complex DAGs can become cumbersome and may lead to configuration errors if not properly handled.

Drools videos

Dog Feed :- Drools Dog Food Review (In Hindi) By Dog N Dogs

More videos:

  • Review - drools focus dog food review with PROOF
  • Review - Pet Care - Know About All Drools Product - Special guest - Bhola Shola

Apache Airflow videos

Airflow Tutorial for Beginners - Full Course in 2 Hours 2022

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Drools and Apache Airflow)
BPM
100 100%
0% 0
Workflow Automation
0 0%
100% 100
Rule Engine
100 100%
0% 0
Automation
10 10%
90% 90

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Drools and Apache Airflow

Drools Reviews

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Apache Airflow Reviews

5 Airflow Alternatives for Data Orchestration
While Apache Airflow continues to be a popular tool for data orchestration, the alternatives presented here offer a range of features and benefits that may better suit certain projects or team preferences. Whether you prioritize simplicity, code-centric design, or the integration of machine learning workflows, there is likely an alternative that meets your needs. By...
Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
Apache Airflow is a workflow streamlining solution aiming at accelerating routine procedures. This article provides a detailed description of Apache Airflow as one of the most popular automation solutions. It also presents and compares alternatives to Airflow, their characteristic features, and recommended application areas. Based on that, each business could decide which...
Source: blog.skyvia.com
10 Best Airflow Alternatives for 2024
In a nutshell, you gained a basic understanding of Apache Airflow and its powerful features. On the other hand, you understood some of the limitations and disadvantages of Apache Airflow. Hence, this article helped you explore the best Apache Airflow Alternatives available in the market. So, you can try hands-on on these Airflow Alternatives and select the best according to...
Source: hevodata.com
A List of The 16 Best ETL Tools And Why To Choose Them
Apache Airflow is an open-source platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. The platform features a web-based user interface and a command-line interface for managing and triggering workflows.
15 Best ETL Tools in 2022 (A Complete Updated List)
Apache Airflow programmatically creates, schedules and monitors workflows. It can also modify the scheduler to run the jobs as and when required.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Apache Airflow seems to be a lot more popular than Drools. While we know about 71 links to Apache Airflow, we've tracked only 6 mentions of Drools. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Drools mentions (6)

  • Ask HN: What is the current state of "logical" AI?
    See https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/6/273222-the-silent-revolution-of-sat/fulltext and also modern production rules engines like https://drools.org/ Oddly, back when “expert system shells” were cool people thought 10,000 rules were difficult to handle, now 1,000,000 might not be a problem at all. Back then the RETE algorithm was still under development and people were using linear search and not hash tables... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • How Expert Systems AI is Transforming Industries
    Drools – an open-source business rule management system that allows developers to create and manage complex decision logic. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Your views and opinions on Python's rule-engine package
    - Drools - Available in JVM environments (Java, Scala and similar) - uses FEEL for expression language. Source: over 1 year ago
  • 🚀 Introducing GoRules: Open-Source Business Rules Engine
    GoRules is a modern, open-source rules engine designed for high performance and scalability. Our mission is to democratise rules engines and drive early adoption. Rules engines are very useful as they allow business users to easily understand and modify core business logic with little help from developers. You can think of us as a modern, less memory-hungry version of Drools that will be available in many... Source: over 1 year ago
  • A General Workflow Engine
    Is this something like Drools? It's quite uncommon but it is used in situations where certain sets of business rules change a lot and you want business analysts to be able to quickly change them in a simple graphical UI. Source: about 3 years ago
View more

Apache Airflow mentions (71)

  • Data Engineering with DLT and REST
    This article demonstrates how to work with near real-time and historical data using the dlt package. Whether you need to scale data access across the enterprise or provide historical data for post-event analysis, you can use the same framework to provide customer data. In a future article, I'll demonstrate how to use dlt with a workflow orchestrator such as Apache Airflow or Dagster.``. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Data on Kubernetes: Part 3 - Managing Workflows with Job Schedulers and Batch-Oriented Workflow Orchestrators
    There are several tools available that can help manage these workflows. Apache Airflow is a platform designed to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Apache Doris Job Scheduler for Task Automation
    Job scheduling is an important part of data management as it enables regular data updates and cleanups. In a data platform, it is often undertaken by workflow orchestration tools like Apache Airflow and Apache Dolphinscheduler. However, adding another component to the data architecture also means investing extra resources for management and maintenance. That's why Apache Doris 2.1.0 introduces a built-in Job... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • How I've implemented the Medallion architecture using Apache Spark and Apache Hdoop
    Instead of the custom orchestrator I used, a proper orchestration tool should replace it like Apache Airflow, Dagster, ..., etc. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 10 Open Source Tools for Building MLOps Pipelines
    An integral part of an ML project is data acquisition and data transformation into the required format. This involves creating ETL (extract, transform, load) pipelines and running them periodically. Airflow is an open source platform that helps engineers create and manage complex data pipelines. Furthermore, the support for Python programming language makes it easy for ML teams to adopt Airflow. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Drools and Apache Airflow, you can also consider the following products

DecisionRules.io - Business rule engine that lets you create and deploy business rules, while all your rules run in a secure and scalable cloud. Unlike other rule engines, you can create your first rule in 5 minutes and make 100k decisions in a minute via API.

Make.com - Tool for workflow automation (Former Integromat)

Camunda - The Universal Process Orchestrator

ifttt - IFTTT puts the internet to work for you. Create simple connections between the products you use every day.

jBPM - jBPM is a flexible Business Process Management (BPM) Suite.

Microsoft Power Automate - Microsoft Power Automate is an automation platform that integrates DPA, RPA, and process mining. It lets you automate your organization at scale using low-code and AI.