BRMS

Main concepts

Unlike traditional approach when the business logic is implemented directly in a program code of information systems, business rules management systems are focused on "human-readable" representation of business logic in the form of set of the descriptive statements about data domain (business) intended for creation and support by business users, but not IT specialists.

The business rule is presented in a general view in a form of a declarative statement of a type: If (conditions), then (list of actions), differently (alternative list of actions).

Business rules in BRMS integrate in the blocks presented in the form of tables or decision trees.

Main advantages of use of the solutions based on BRMS services in comparison with traditional model of implementation of business logic in directly program code are:

• increase in adaptivity and efficiency of reaction of information environment of the company to changes in the strategy of business due to involvement of business users in process of management of business rules;
• cutting of costs for adaptation of systems to the changed business conditions;
• increase in transparency of logic of decision making in the company and its audit;
• sales opportunity of system approach to decision management in the organization (SPPR).

BRMS can serve both as a management tool business logic for separate applications, and a basis of services of the solutions providing services of decision making on the basis of business logic for business applications within all of information infrastructure of the company, for example, when using SOA.

Use of business rules management systems is an important part of a decision management system in the organization (SPPR).

Architecture

The graphical interface of the editor governed on the example of JBoss Drools 4.0

As a rule, BRMS includes the server of execution of business rules (Business Rules Engine), tools and editing business rules, their storage (repository), means of the analysis and testing of business rules.

At the same time there are several approaches to accomplishment of rules within BRMS. The most naive approach is consecutive execution of all rules in a system. At change by the first rules of initial data, the subsequent deal with the changed data, at the same time already performed rules repeatedly are not applied to data. An alternative to consecutive execution is application of the direct logical output (induction) considering the sequence of accomplishment of rules and their interdependence based on algorithms of the choice, such as RETE.

Tools and editing business rules, in view of their focus mainly on business users, as a rule, have in addition to support of declarative language of the description of rules means of their graphical representation in the form of forms of the description of conditions, tables and decision trees.

See Also

Business logic

Metadata

OMG

EDM

SVBR

Jboss

BI