Rule based adaptive systems are growing in popularity and rules have been considered as an effective and elastic way to adapt systems. A rule based approach allows transparent monitoring of performed adaptation actions and gives an important advantage of easily modifiable adaptation process. The goal of this paper is to summarize literature review on rule based adaptation systems. The emphasis is put on rule types, semantics used for defining rules and measurement of effectiveness and correctness of rule based adaptation systems. The literature review has been done following a systematic approach consisting of three steps: planning, reviewing and analysis. Targeted research questions have been used to guide the review process. The review results are to be used for conducting further research in the area of rule based context-aware adaptive systems. This paper accents the potential of using rules as means to perform adaptive actions in enterprise applications taking into account contextual factors as well as points challenges, difficulties and open issues for planning, developing, implementing and running of such systems.