Business Rules Engine

General Information

Contracting Office Address

Social Security Administration, Deputy Commissioner, Budget, Finance and Maintenance, Office of Acquisition and Grants, 7111 Security Boulevard, Baltimore, MD, 21244.

Description

This is a REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. Reference Reference-Number-SSA-RFI-10-1002 when responding to this announcement.  The Social Security Administration (SSA) is attempting to identify responsible vendors that are capable of providing an enterprise wide Business Rules Engine (BRE) solution.  The tool will be installed in a Mainframe environment on WebSphere Application Server (WAS) at the National Computer Center in Baltimore, Maryland.  The mainframe operating system will be Z/OS 1.9 or higher. SSA has a vast customer base (56 mil beneficiaries, as of July 2006) and the tool must have the ability to handle large volumes of data coupled with huge (more than 75 mil) number of transactions per day. The solution shall meet the following technical specifications: The tool should support the following two scenarios: A) Host the Rules on a global Server (WAS on z/OS or WAS on Solaris) and the applications should be able access the Rules as a Web Service. B) Pack the Rules in a jar and deploy them as an embedded part of the application. Along with the above scenarios the tool must satisfy the following minimal requirements: 1.0 General features; 1.1 Decision Table Support; 1.2 Decision Significant Factors support - Track and report all factors for implementing a Business Rule; 1.3 Decision Exclusion support - Track and report all factors for exclusion of a Business Rule; 2.0 Development; 2.1 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) included; 2.2 Eclipse IDE support: RAD; 2.3 Software Development Kit (SDK) for extensions; 2.4 Knowledge capture tools provided - Create/capture project artifacts such as requirement doc, process models etc; 2.5 Event-related user notifications: Send emails/alerts to specific groups/users on specific outcomes/conditions; 3.0 Rule Execution; 3.1 Rules sequencing allowed - Trigger rules from rules; 3.2 Ability to put Effective date and End date for Rules; 4.0 Integration Support and Languages; 4.1 COBOL, CICS, J2EE, JDBC, ODBC, HTTP, SOAP; 4.2 Data Power; 4.3 Batch communications - Sessions with full error-recovery; 5.0 Service Orientation; 5.1 Support for ESBs, Registry and Repository, and other SOA tools; 5.2 Automatic generation of WSDL interfaces; 5.3 RPC-style messaging, inbound: Receiving parameters from external/internal services for continual execution; 5.4 RPC-style messaging, outbound: Invoke Internal/External services with specific parameters; 5.5 Document-style messaging, inbound: Accept information/documents from specific Urls/Servers; 5.4 Document-style messaging, outbound: Post documents/information to desired Servers/Urls; 6.0          Platform Architecture; 6.1 Operating Systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, z/OS, Solaris; 6.2 Databases: Oracle , DB2 V9; 6.3 Direct Database Update functionality; 6.4 Web services support; 6.5 Java. NET Classes support; 6.6 WebSphere Application Server (WAS); 6.7 Hardware : IBM /Z (Mainframe), SUN/Solaris, iSeries; 6.8 JavaEE Application Server support; 7.0 lgorithms; 7.1 Forward Chaining; 8.0 Operation Mode; 8.0            Batch operation; 8.1 Online / real-time operation; 9.0 Testing and Documentation generation; 9.1 Load Testing capabilities; 9.2 Rules testing capabilities; 9.3 Automatic detection of incomplete / ambiguous / conflicting rules; 9.4 Rules collision detection; 9.5 Rules redundancy detection; 9.6 Rules set Reuse allowed; 10.0 Security; 10.1 Role-based security; 10.2 Provides file access security; 10.3 Restrict users to read-only or write-only access; 10.4 Restrict user access to records within their functional area; 10.5 WS-Security support; 11.0          Import / Export; 11.1 Ability to import/export Rules in files(.txt, .xl, .doc); 11.2 Ability to import/export: Decision tables, Decision trees, Rule flows, Vocabulary; 12.0 Monitoring / Enterprise Maintenance; 12.1 Enterprise Monitoring support; 12.2 Tivoli; 13.0 The solution shall be compliant with Section 508 Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) Accessibility Standards.  Interested vendors must provide verifiable proof in sufficient detail to demonstrate their ability to meet the SSA's requirement, see URL site    http://www.ssa.gov/oag/acq/oagacq_508.htm.  Vendors having the capability to meet the above requirements are invited to submit complete details.  The responses must clearly state how their product provides the ability to meet the above requirements.  Interested parties shall respond to this notice within 7 calendar days from date of this publication. Vendors responding shall indicate whether their services are available on the GSA Federal Supply Schedules. Pricing data may be submitted. This is not a request for proposal and the Government does not intend to pay for information submitted. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation of the data received. No contract award will be made on the basis of responses received; however, this information will be used in SSA's assessment of capable sources. No Faxed responses. Requests for copies of a solicitation will not be honored or acknowledged. No formal solicitation is being issued at this time. Please submit electronic responses only to the contract specialist identified herein. NOTE: There is a size limit for e-mail: No submission shall be greater than 5 MB.

Original Point of Contact

Aminta Freeman, Contract Specialist, Email [email protected]