Business Rules INFS 770 – KM for E-Business Professor L. Kerschberg Spring 2004

Outline of Presentation Why study them? What are business rules? How do we represent them? Sources of business rules. Business Rule Taxonomies Commercial Products

Why Study Business Rules High-level declarative specification of rules allow: Better communication and understanding, Efficient management, improved control and quality, better consistency, phased evolution, and risk management. Repository-based centralized rule storage allows for better control, update, verification, evolution and transformation to target systems.

What are Business Rules Rules capture the What, How and Why of an organization: What: The information used by the organization How: The activities performed Why: The rules that govern the organization Rules can be used to represent: Activities, events and triggers, state information, Constraints (quality, consistency, integrity, etc.), Policies and laws governing the organization, Expertise of key people in the organization, and Data as knowledge (culled via data mining).

Sources of Business Rules Company policies, conditions and procedures that must be satisfied, External policies such as government regulations, tax code, security policy and safety requirements, Transaction consistency and integrity constraints, Examples for E-Business: Customer preferences, supplier contractual terms, Configuration rules for product lines, special sales offers, customer transaction processing.

Why identify rules? Benefits of Business Rules They improve communication and understanding They help get requirements right first time They centralize knowledge They reduce development time and cost They enable faster maintenance and enhancement

Business Rule Taxonomies James Odell Constraint: State Constraint Transition Event/action Derivation Computation Inference

Business Rule Taxonomies GUIDE Study of Business Rules Specification of a meta-model for rules. High-level view of terms, facts, rules, constraints, regulations. Now under the Business Rules Consortium.

Business Rule Taxonomies Chris Date Database Integrity Constraints Domain (datatype) Column (attribute) Table (relationship variable) Database (logical database)

Business Rule Taxonomies Ron Ross: Periodic Table of Rules I.Instance Verifiers II.Type Verifiers III.Position Verifiers IV.Functional Verifiers V.Comparative Verifiers VI.Mathematical Evaluators VII.Projection Controllers

Commercial Products Versata – Versata’s E-Business Automation System is an approach that provides accelerated methods for specifying: The business rules–logic–associated with transactional e-business applications, and The e-business processes that carry the transactional information to the systems and people who need to touch the information. Visit the Versata knowledge base of technical Papers, discussion groups, etc.

Versata Business Rules Validation Datatype, Domain of values, Reference table Derivation Formula or Inference Constraint State Transition enabler or enforcer Event/Action Automatic Triggers Relationship Referential Integrity

Confidential13 Versata PDX… N-up Scalar Forms Tab Sheets (+ Scalar Groups) Combo Picks, Pop-up Picks & Error Messages Conditional Grid Row Color Groups – with own caption (s) Conditional Transitions (and Set Field) Proper Length, Caption Location, Required indicator Conditional Field Hide, Graphics

Commercial Products Blaze Advisor and Blaze Expert by Blaze Software (formerly Neuron Data): information at Blaze Advisor Solutions Suite includes support for the input and change of business rules "on the fly" using a combination of "near natural language" and templates intended for use by business users. Blaze Expert is a business rule solution for building expert systems and rule-powered applications. Their site provides product information and news releases on their product line. White papers are available on request.

Commercial Products Platinum Aion, now part of Computer Associates. n_ps.htm n_ps.htm “PLATINUM Aion is the leading rule-based development tool on the market today, combining powerful business rule and object oriented technologies to create and maintain complex, knowledge-intensive applications.”

Commercial Products BRS RuleTrack by Business Rule Solutions, LLC and Framework Software, Inc.: product information at Software, Incwww.BRSolutions.com BRS RuleTrackTM is an automated tool for recording and organizing business rules from the business perspective (and independent of particular implementation environments). The tool provides direct support for rule management. It can be used wherever rules need to be managed. Their site provides product information on this, and other rule-related, products and publications.

Commercial Products HOW by Riverton Software: information at HOW is a family of products for component-based development / deployment. The HOW Modeling Edition supports business-oriented analysis and design. Its "Business Rule Builder" component supports deriving business rules from use cases and linking the rules to the business objects that implement them. This site provides product information and customer case studies.

Commercial Products ILOG Rules by ILOG: information at ILOG Rules is a rules engine that enables applications to incorporate dynamic rules seamlessly to control real time data flows and react instantly. The site provides product information, a third-party analyst's report on the product, and their own white paper providing a technical overview of the product.

Commercial Products USoft Developer by USoft: information at USoft's tools add a business rules engine to existing database applications and development tools. Their site provides product information and white papers on business rules technology.