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OpenRules, Inc.
OpenRules® User Manual
together with live process modeling, allows OpenRules® to complete the rule
modeling cycle without leaving Excel.
OpenRules® provides the means to make business rules and forms independent
of a concrete implementation of such concepts. The business logic expressed in
the decision tables should not depend on the implementation of the objects these
rules are dealing with. For example, if a rule says: “If driver's age is less than 17
then reject the application” the only thing this business rule should "know" about
the object “driver” is the fact that it has a property “age” and this property has a
type that support a comparison operator “<” with an integer. It is a question of
configuration whether the Driver is a Java class or an XML file or a DB table
from a legacy system. Similarly, if a form has an input field "Driver's Age", the
form should be able to accept a user's input into this field and automatically
convert it into the proper object associated with this field independently of how
this object was implemented.
Thus, OpenRules® supports data source independent business rules (decision
tables) and web forms. Your business rules can work with an object of type
Customer independently of the fact that this type is defined as a Java class, as
an XML file or as an Excel table. You can see how it can be done using examples
HelloJava, HelloXML, and HelloRules from the OpenRules®'s standard
installation. It is a good practice to start with Excel-based data types. Even if you
later on switch to Java classes of other data types, you would always be able to
reuse Excel-based types for standalone testing of your rules-based applications.
Datatype and Data Tables
OpenRules® allows a non-technical user to represent different data types directly in Excel and
to define objects of these types to be used as test data. Actually, it provides the ability to
create Excel-based Data Models, which, in turn, define problem specific business terms and
facts. At the same time, a data model can include data types specified outside Excel, for
example in Java classes or in XML files. Here is an example of a simple data type
"PersonalInfo":
85