SBVR Support for Inference: Logical Effects of Claims of Necessity and Obligation on Implications

Donald E.  Baisley
Donald E. Baisley Contributor, Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) Read Author Bio || Read All Articles by Donald E. Baisley
Keri   Anderson Healy
Keri Anderson Healy Editor, Business Rules Journal , Principal, The Automated Reasoning Corporation (ARCorp Inc.) and Consultant, Model Systems Consultants, Inc. Read Author Bio || Read All Articles by Keri Anderson Healy
Ronald G.  Ross
Ronald G. Ross Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC , Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal and Co-Chair, Building Business Capability (BBC) Read Author Bio       || Read All Articles by Ronald G. Ross

How would SBVR support the kind of inference needed for decisions or determinations (e.g., by rules as expressed in decision tables)? This discussion explains the logical underpinning of the appropriate approach. It is based on implications, which are treated differently under claims of necessity for facts vs. claims of obligation for facts. The requisite 'magic' happens under the former.

Standard citation for this article:


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Donald E. Baisley, Keri Anderson Healy and Ronald G. Ross, "SBVR Support for Inference: Logical Effects of Claims of Necessity and Obligation on Implications" Business Rules Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4, (Apr. 2019)
URL: http://www.brcommunity.com/a2019/b988.html

About our Contributor(s):


Donald  E. Baisley
Donald E. Baisley Contributor, Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR)

Don Baisley works in the areas of business rules, vocabulary, and model-driven architecture. He is one of the original contributors to OMG's Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR). Don also contributed to several other OMG activities including development of the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the Meta Object Facility (MOF), XML Metadata Interchange (XMI), and the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM).

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Keri   Anderson Healy
Keri Anderson Healy Editor, Business Rules Journal , Principal, The Automated Reasoning Corporation (ARCorp Inc.) and Consultant, Model Systems Consultants, Inc.

Keri Anderson Healy is a principal in The Automated Reasoning Corporation (ARCorp Inc.) and consultant for Model Systems Consultants, Inc. She specializes in the practical application of modeling techniques and the development of architecture frameworks. She has over thirty years experience in developing shared data applications within an architected framework for both the private and public sectors.

Keri was a founding member and original chair of the Business Rules Group (BRG). She has served as technical editor on several major publications, including the original GUIDE white paper on Business Rules, the revision to the IDEF1X language standard (IEEE standard) which updates the classic IDEF1X data modeling language into an object modeling language, the BRG's 'Business Motivation Model' paper, and, most recently, the 'Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules' (SBVR) which is in finalization to become an OMG standard.

Keri is an adjunct faculty member of The Evergreen State College, where she teaches rule and object modeling techniques, and she developed the data and behavior modeling components of the University of Washington's DRM/Distance Learning program.

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Ronald  G. Ross
Ronald G. Ross Co-Founder & Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC , Executive Editor, Business Rules Journal and Co-Chair, Building Business Capability (BBC)

Ronald G. Ross is Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rule Solutions, LLC, where he actively develops and applies the BRS Methodology including RuleSpeak®, DecisionSpeak and TableSpeak.

Ron is recognized internationally as the "father of business rules." He is the author of ten professional books including the groundbreaking first book on business rules The Business Rule Book in 1994. His newest are:


Ron serves as Executive Editor of BRCommunity.com and its flagship publication, Business Rules Journal. He is a sought-after speaker at conferences world-wide. More than 50,000 people have heard him speak; many more have attended his seminars and read his books.

Ron has served as Chair of the annual International Business Rules & Decisions Forum conference since 1997, now part of the Building Business Capability (BBC) conference where he serves as Co-Chair. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in the 1980s, and an editor of its Business Motivation Model (BMM) standard and the Business Rules Manifesto. He is active in OMG standards development, with core involvement in SBVR.

Ron holds a BA from Rice University and an MS in information science from Illinois Institute of Technology. Find Ron's blog on http://www.brsolutions.com/category/blog/. For more information about Ron visit www.RonRoss.info. Tweets: @Ronald_G_Ross

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