Summary

A developer asks:

Our application has thousands of activity rules.   In the activities, we branch using decisions and when rules to deal with regional variations.  For example, certain taxes apply only to sales in certain U.S. states.

The team has considered, instead of this "two-dimensional" approach, that it might be better to use circumstances with rule resolution to have a more 3-dimensional approach. 

Our question is, which is most efficient?   Is rule resolution more efficient than the test conditions we now use in activities? 

Suggested Approach

Rule resolution is a more effective and more efficient way of selecting the rules.

Process Commander includes infrastructure to make rule resolution select the the right rule at the right time quickly. Anytime that you execute activities that merely select other rules, the activities that are do the selection are pure overhead in the process (if what you're doing can be modeled in rule resolution).

Whenever you can design your application in a way so that rule resolution can accomplish a design objective, then rule resolution is a far more efficient approach.