IDIOM Decision Suite Architecture
IDIOM has four major components. These are:
- Decision Manager
- Generator
- Test Executive
- Decision Engine
A diagram showing the conceptual architecture of IDIOM is shown in Figure 1. IDIOM decisions are developed against a definition of the business objects to be used within the application. This definition corresponds to the terms, facts and action assertion business rules1, and is supplied as an XML Schema. Therefore, the first step in developing decisions is to import the business object definitions into the Decision Manager.
Figure 1: Conceptual Architecture of the IDIOM Decision Suite
Once the definition of the business objects has been imported, the analyst, or rules designer, can use the Decision Manager to develop decisions and attach them to the appropriate nodes in the business object definition. The imported business object definition and decision definitions are stored in the Decision Repository. The IDIOM Test Executive is used to test and validate decisions as they are developed. Once the decisions have been developed and verified they can be exported to the IDIOM Decision Generator. This generates the runtime implementation of the decisions. Currently, three different generation targets exist. These are Java, C# and C++ runtime targets. The generated code can then be deployed to the target application. Within the target application, the IDIOM Decision Engine provides an interface between the application and the decision implementation code and executes the decisions on behalf of the application.
1 See the Introduction to IDIOM whitepaper for more information