RenewOps / Research / EC-WP-1103

A Rules Engine That Measures Its Own Usefulness

NORA — the not-needed rate, four rules that could never fire, and a rule that fired on the healthy sites.

Every alarm system grows monotonically, because nobody removes a rule. This is the measurement that breaks the ratchet: a rules engine instrumented to keep score of how often its own output was ignored. Included is an honest account of what the same instrumentation found underneath it. Most of the defects in this reference are ours.

Contents

1. What a rule has to earn
2. The not-needed rate
3. Four rules that could never fire
4. The rule that fired on the healthy sites
5. Quiet periods, and what an operator actually dismissed
6. The procedure library — retrieval that cites
7. What the vocabulary permits
8. Ten questions for your own rules engine
9. What RenewOps does about this

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