Drools provides an implementation of the Java Rule Engine API (known as JSR94), which allows for support of multiple rule engines from a single API. JSR94 does not deal in anyway with the rule language itself. W3C is working on the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) and the OMG has started to work on a standard based on RuleML, recently Haley Systems has also proposed a rule language standard called RML.

It should be remembered that the JSR94 standard represents the "least common denominator" in features across rule engines - this means there is less functionality in the JSR94 api than in the standard Drools api. So by using JSR94 you are restricting yourself in taking advantage of using the full capabilities of the Drools Rule Engine. It is necessary to expose further functionality, like globals and support for drl, dsl and xml via properties maps due to the very basic feature set of JSR94 - this introduces non portable functionality. Further to this, as JSR94 does not provide a rule language, you are only solving a small fraction of the complexity of switching rule engines with very little gain. So while we support JSR94, for those that insist on using it, we strongly recommend you program against the Drools API.