Expressing business rules

Abstract

Business rules are formal statements about the data and processes of an enterprise. My overall approach to business rules is described in [1, 2]. Here, I will briefly discuss things we have learned about the expression of business rules in the last several years. This will shed light on where we stand in understanding business rules today. First, it is clearly important to separate analysis-level expression of business rules from their design-level expression. Most of what I will say here is aimed toward the design level, but let me start with the analysis level. Effective expression of business rules at the analysis level requires formative guidelines or Business Rule Statement Templates. Such language templates are now offered commercially (by my company and others). Think of these language templates as text or sentence patterns, to ensure higher clarity and consistency. These templates are important for making the business rule approach practical. At the design level, how business rules are expressed to users must be cleanly separated from how they are represented inside the system. What is good for one is not good for the other.