DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Posts Tagged ‘Business Rules Management’

In case you missed it, the recording of last weeks webinar can be viewed at

http://www.solentive.com/webinar-exclusive-preview.html

To recap the MAMBA framework can be used map , design and implement your business logic in a way that will allow Business people and IT to work more closely together than ever before.

The Rete Algorithm is a marked improvement on Sequentially organised systems. To understand the benefit you need to understand what it is not.

In a sequenial BRE, the rules are executed one at a time in a sequential order. The more rule you add, the more time is needed to work through them. Sequential Rules engines works prohibitively slowly for large or complexed implementations. The problem is further exasperated in solutions with a high amount of traffic.

Instead the Rete Algorithim is used as a way of calculating the quickest route to proceed through a ‘maze’ of rule. In simple terms, we are able to create rule about which rules to action. The obvious benefit is that the system can handle much larger amounts of data and faster and simulate business logic which is then automated.

What is a BRE?

The Business Rules Engine (BRE) is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. A BRE can be used in Business Process Automation to significantly streamline the operational efficiency in a business.

A modern BRE is best thought of a rule management system. The rules of a business can change as the business grows or evolves. Certain rules may be applicable within a certain timeframe for example and therefore Business rules need to be updated and managed with the changing needs of the business.

The BRE can be used as a vehicle to translate ‘business logic’ into information workflows.

What are Business Rules?

Rules are everywhere. In fact a good business is valued or assessed on its systems, policies and procedures. These can also be known as business rules.

Business rules are visible in all businesses from SMB to Corporate. If you are able to document and map your business rules, you stand a good chance of significantly increasing the efficiency of your business through software and automation of some of your business processes.

The following table provides examples of some of the rules that might effect decisions in various industries.

You will notice that all business rules can be summarised into two categories

Either IF – THEN statements or IF – THEN – ELSE statements

The IF – THEN statement is also known as an inference rule and can be used to look up make decisions such as ‘Should this customer be approved for a mortgage?’ by executing rules of the form “IF some-condition THEN allow-customer-a-mortgage”. They can also be used to create fact tables which may allow the system to statements such as. If the conditions are ‘wet’ and the vehicle is over 1.5 tonnes, then the maximum permitted speed is 40 kph in populated areas.

The other condition, the IF – THEN- ELSE statement is also referred to as an ‘Event Condition Action’ rule.

Modern Rules Engines can really be considered rule management systems. For instance our rules engine provides a rule authoring environment, as well as a server, testing environment and library. Effectively a library of rules can be written, reused, activated and deactivated over time.

The rules are no longer in the control of a programmer but a business analyst who can write or modify the rules in Domain Specific Language (DSL). This means that the rules are written in a language that is industry specific rather than code.

How can is it used?

Our BRE can be used as part of a customworkflow solution or a part of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in unison with Biztalk.

A interesting application for a BRE could in the automation of a help desk functionality. Where a large knowledge base exists, the BRE can be used to understand where the knowledge base is applicable through rules.

More reasons to use a BRE…

Every business is different Our rules engine is may deliver some or all of the following benefits.

·
Drastically
reduce development time and costs

o
From
5000 lines of code in C# to 150 lines of code in the BRE.

·
Significantly
reduce maintenance cost.

·
Change
business rules on the fly – less change requests and less programming!

·
Build
a faster more reactive business systems.

·
Protect
data consistency by using a BRE to handle complex calculations.

·
Remove
manual Processes where possible

·
Allocate
human resources to more humanistic tasks.

·
Free
up your overstretched IT department.

Need to know more?

If you need to know more or have any questions about how BRE can help your business, feel free to contact us.