Decision-centric rules modeling
The purpose of a business rule is to enable a business to consistently apply business policy to decision-making in order to achieve desired outcomes. The decision-centric approach to business rules definition involves modeling the decision-making process as an explicit part of the business rules model.
The decision-centric business rules model comprises the following:
- Fact (or data) model
- Business rules, each of which determines a single value
- Decision model
- Versioning by date and business scenario
The fact model is a tree-like hierarchy of relationships between facts (represented by one or more XML schemas).
The decision model is a tree-like hierarchy of processing relationships between decisions (represented in the form of a mind-map). The decision model proceeds from the level of complex decision-making that determines many facts, to the level of atomic decision-making that determines single facts.
Atomic decisions are linked to both the fact model and the business rules. Complex decisions are linked only to the fact model and are not directly connected to specific business rules because the outcome of a complex decision is the sum of the facts derived by the atomic decisions that comprise the complex decision.
The purpose of the decision model. as distinct from the specification of individual business rules, is to:
- enhance the businesses knowledge of how it applies its business rules within the decision making process
- reduce the granularity of the decisions to a level where it is practical to define a specific rule that determines a single-valued outcome
- provide a level of abstraction that enables re-use of rules across atomic decisions and enables versioning of the rules by time or by business context (such as `geographic location' or `customer')
- enhance the validity of the overall business rules model by reconciling the decision model with the fact model
- provide a new software component, the `decision model', which extends business capability by adding intelligence and configurability to automated processes
- provide a visual business-accessible representation of the decision-making process that implements business policy
IDIOM views a business rule as a calculation or formula that determines the outcome of a single atomic decision. A formula can be composed of many logical, mathematical and other operations, provided it determines a single-valued outcome.