CRUD stands for Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete — all system events. You should never express business rules based on CRUD. For one thing, CRUD isn't business terminology so the result will always be a data or system rule rather than a business rule. Not good! But there's more. Using CRUD to express rules has hidden side effects. In this month's column, Ron Ross explains what they are. [ read more ]

Decision management transforms your hard-to-change enterprise applications into action-oriented, flexible, predictive, smarter systems that learn and adapt. Smarter systems don't require ripping out and replacing existing applications. Smarter systems are simply your current systems made smarter. This month, James Taylor describes the four characteristics that make systems smarter. [ read more ]

How many times have you heard someone complain that ‘things are so complicated because of the many exceptions in our organization’? In last month's 'Rule Observatory', Silvie Spreeuwenberg examined what it takes to describe exceptions as business rules. Now, with our exceptional cases described by 'just some more rules', Silvie takes a closer look at what options a software developer has to program such rules for automated software support. [ read more ]

In this series of articles Terry Halpin discusses ontology-based approaches to modeling, with a main focus is on popular ontology languages proposed for the Semantic Web, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), RDF Schema (RDFS), and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The first article provided a brief introduction to ontologies, the Semantic Web, and RDF. This instalment discusses the N3 notation for RDF and covers the basics of RDF Schema. [ read more ]

Is it a Cake or is it Clean? (A Litmus Test for Process)
By Kathy Long

Until an organization understands process, it cannot manage the value delivery to its customers or the quality of that delivery. Organizations in the service sector have far greater difficulty in defining and managing process because of something called 'tangibility'. Manufacturing has it, but service doesn't. Where we have 'intangibility', it's much easier to think about and work on the activities that comprise the process, rather than trying to define the overall process. The danger in this is that improvement of activities will often sub-optimize the overall process. This month, Kathy Long presents a set of characteristics that can be used as criteria for distinguishing between process and activity, thereby providing seven basic tests that can facilitate better decisions regarding process improvement work. [ read more ]

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The Zachman Framework and Observations on Methodologies
By John A. Zachman

"Calling All Zach-o-lites!" (and also any Zachman Framework 'newbies'). In this month's feature, John Zachman talks about just what a "MOTHER OF ALL METHODOLOGIES" might be, returning us all to a reasonable playing field by explaining that, "I am confident that the only way an integrated, interoperable, aligned (etc., etc.) Enterprise will ever be achieved is by creating and managing the architectural primitives as defined by the Framework with those Enterprise engineering design objectives in mind, quite independently from the implementation methodologies being employed." [ read more ]

The 2009 Business Rules Forum hosted a panel discussion by vendors whose products are innovators in the business rules arena. The four panelists who sat on the 2009 Business Rules Forum Vendor Panel responded to audience questions, sharing their perspectives on the future direction of the BRMS market. [ read more ]

It is safe to assume that when starting up a process initiative, not all points of view, interests, and judgment criteria will be known. We may be unaware of one another's criteria even if we think we are aware. If we can be made aware of the different points of view then we can at least have a plan to get our perspectives aligned. In this month's In Process column, Roger discusses a quadrant of possibilities that we may start with and he provides an action plan for attaining a position of confidence and commitment to the effort at hand, depending on the going-in position of awareness and alignment. [ read more ]

This is the thirteenth article in a series describing a practical method of developing unambiguous natural language rule statements. Graham Witt has developed this method for a large Australian government agency that has selected the Business Rules Approach and the Object Management Group's Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) as representative of best rules practice. In this instalment Graham enhances the set of business rule guidelines in a detailed examination of the rules that govern flight check-in and boarding. He ends with a recap of quality assurance of rule statements, listing criteria that can be used to test the quality of a rule statement. [ read more ]

Now that most business rule tools, methods, and models also contain a tabular form of business decision rules, it is a good idea to revisit the fundamentals of good decision table design, as laid out more than a decade ago and now again coming into their own. In this month's column, Jan Vanthienen reminds us of the striking similarity between decision tables and databases, and points to earlier work on how good decision table design and good database design are subject to similar concerns, such as consistency, non-redundancy, normalization, etc. [ read more ]

In this month's 'Semantics for Business', Sjir Nijssen's invited guest author concludes his history of the Orange Report ("ISO Orange Report TR 9007 – Concepts and Terminology for the Conceptual Schema and the Information Base"), an early body of work that recognized the importance of formalizing the semantics of information. Joost J. van Griethuysen shares his perspective on how this widely-acclaimed early publication relates to SBVR. [ read more ]

This month our Standards Reporter Donald Chapin invites Paul Vincent to report some news from the OMG PRR (Production Rule Representation) team's meeting last week. A standard practice in BPM-BRMS is to 'model' decision rules using notations like decision tables and trees, and then transform these either to some custom algorithm or production rules as defined in PRR. Since the BPMN2 'business rule task' does not have a standard model or notation (beyond the notation icon) the PRR team is proposing to fill this gap with a "Decision Model and Notation RFP." Any interested OMG member is encouraged to join in on this discussion. [ read more ]

In this month's "Plainly Speaking" column, Gladys S. W. Lam talks about business rules and business requirements. She describes how they are different and how they impact each other. [ read more ]