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1. OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Single Hit Rules Tables To achieve this you may use a so called single hit rules table which is specified by putting any return type except void after the keyword Rules The following is an example of a single hit rules table that will do exactly what we need Rules defineSalutation Customer customer Response response Gender Marital Status Set Salutation Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms 22 Another positive effect of such single hitness may be observed in connection with large tables with say 1000 rows If OpenRules obtains a hit on rule 10 it would not bother to check the validity of the remaining 990 rules Having rules tables with a return value may also simplify your interface For example we do not really need the special object Response which we used to write our defined salutation Our simplified rules table produces a salutation without an additional special object Rules String defineSalutation Customer customer C1 C2 Al customer gender customer maritalStatus return salutation equals gender equals status String gender String status String salutation Gender Marital Status Set Salutation Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms 22 Please note that the last action in this table should return a value that has the same type as the entire single hit table The single hi
2. Single Hit Rule Table 510 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules void tableName Typel parl Type2 par2 Multi Hit Rule Table RuleSequence void tableName Typel parl Type2 par2 7 Rule Sequence Table Row 2 Condition Action Indicators The condition column indicator is a word starting with C The action column indicator is a word starting with A All other starting characters are ignored and the whole column is considered as a comment Row 3 Code The cells in each column or merged cells for several columns contain Java Snippets Condition codes should contain expressions that return Boolean values If an action code contains any correct Java snippet the return type is irrelevant Row 4 Parameters Each condition action may have from 0 to N parameters Usually there is only one parameter description and it consists of two words parameterType parameterName Example int min parameterName is a standard one word name that corresponds to Java identification rules parameterType can be represented using the following Java types Basic Java types boolean char int long double String Date Standard Java classes java lang Boolean java lang Integer java lang Long java lang Double java lang Character java lang String java util Date 520 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Any custom Java class with a public constructor that has a String par
3. 2 All actions columns such as Conclusion Then Action ActionAny or Message will be executed in top down order for the to be executed rules Thus you should make two important observations about the behavior of the DecisionTablel e Rule actions cannot affect the conditions of any other rules in the decision table there will be no re evaluation of any conditions e Rule overrides are permitted The action of any executed rule may override the action of any previously executed rule Let s consider an example of a rule that states A person of age 17 or older is eligible to drive However in Florida 16 year olds can also drive If we try to present this rule using the default single hit DecisionTable it may look as follows 370 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTable ValidateDrivingEligibility Condition Condition Conclusion DriversAge USState Driving Eligibility Ca 7 4 s Eige Cs e tent onda s O noregi Ce e e Foe o Eligible poet is tito Using a multi hit DecisionTablel we may present the same rule as DecisionTable1 ValidateDrivingEligibility Condition Condition Conclusion Driving Eligibility Eligible ee SY a ET Ed Peis tiie C e r ris Eligible In the DecisionTable1 the first unconditional rule will set Driving Eligibility to Eligible The second rule will reset it to Not
4. e poi ooxml schemas 3 10 FINAL 20140208 jar e dom4j 1 6 1 jar e xmlbeans 2 3 0 jar There is a supporting library e com openrules tools jar contains the following optional facilities operators desc ribed in the Java class Operator that can be used inside your own Rules tables and templates convenience methods like out String text described in the Java class Methods simple JDBC i nterfaces DbUtil Database DatabaseIterator text validation methods like isCreditCardValid String text described in the Java class Validator XML reader If you use the JSR 94 interface you will also need e com openrules jsr94 jar If you use externa lrules from a database you will also need e openrules db jar 142 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual e openrules dbv jar e derby jar e commons cli l l jar 33 ce Different workspaces like openrules decisions openrules rules etc include the proper versions of the folder openrules config Predefined Types and Templates The Excel based templates that support Decisions and Decision Tables included in the folder openrules config e DecisionTemplates xls e DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xlss Sample decision projects include Excel tables of the type Environment that usually refer to openrules config DecisionTemplates xls You may move all templates to another
5. Condition Condition Condition Conclusion Conclusion 10054 Oper Vale fis High 66 A DecisionTable classifcationRules ConditionVarOperValue ConditionVarOperValue ConditionVarOperValue 398 A ESTATE TAX A 0054 Attribute Oper Value Is High 66 6955 AGI TPI RATIO fs You simply replace a column of the type Condition to the one that has the standard type ConditionVarOperValue Similarly instead of a column of the type Conclusion you may use a column of the type ConclusionVarOperValue with 3 sub columns that represent a variable name an operator and a value Business Rules Defined on Collections of Objects Previously when OpenRules users needed to run decisions against collections arrays of business objects they needed to use Java loops This release adds an ability to execute one decision against a collection of objects and to calculate values defined on the entire collection within single decision run Let s consider an example DecisionManyCustomers added to the standard OpenRules installation There is a standard Java bean Customer with different customer attributes such as name age gender salary etc There is also a Java class CollectionOfCustomers 410 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual public class CollectionOfCustomers Customer customers int minSalary int maxSalary int numberOfRichCustomers int totalSalary We
6. You may even keep your Excel files with rules data and other OpenRules tables directly in Subversion If your include statements use http addresses that point to a concrete Subversion repository then the OpenRulesEngine will dynamically access SVN repositories without the necessity to move Excel files back into a file system Another way to use version control is to place your rule workbooks in a database and use DBV protocol to access different versions of the rules in run time read more 106 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules Authoring and Maintenance Tools OpenRules relies on standard commonly used tools mainly from Open Source to organize and manage a Business Rules Repository Business Rules Repository Maintenance Tools User Interfaces Business Glossary AS Technical a jet 4 uw 5 8 vn E Access Control Processing Logic aa e pd a oO un n 5 Users y J ami Technical Users E Style Sheets Interaction Logic ts Technical Users To create and edit rules and other tables presented in Excel files you may use any standard spreadsheet editors such as MS Excel OpenOffice Google Spreadsheets 107 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Google Spreadsheets are especially useful for sharing spreadsheet editing see section Collaborative Rules Management with Google Docs For technical people responsible for rules project manage
7. define another datatype for a social security number SSN String __ frstName Sting middlelnitial String lastName mo a rin Sang ote It is interesting that these changes do not affect the already existing data objects defined above like personalInformation He their SSNs just will not be defined Implementation Restriction Make sure that the very first attribute in a Datatype table has type String or your own type but not a basic Java type like int The following example demonstrates how to create a Data table for a Datatype that includes one dimensional arrays 89 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Datatype Order Here is an example of the proper Data table DEIEROI CO CIRO CIE INTRS PGS394 6P U01 INTRS PGS456 3700 In Progress Paste ARMC 2150 You may also present the same data in the following way Data Order orders INTRS INTRS Paste ARMC 6P U01 PGS394 PGS456 2150 3700 How Data Tables Are Organized Every Datatype table has a vertical or horizontal format A typical vertical Data table has the following structure Data datatypeName tableName AttributeNamel AttributeName2 AttributeName3 from from from datatypeName datatypeName datatypeName 90 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The first signature row consists of two merged cells and starts with the keyword Data The next word shou
8. The use of expressions inside OpenRules tables comes with some performance price mainly during OpenRulesEngine initialization This is understandable because for every cell with an expression OpenRules will create a separate instance of the proper Java class However having multiple representation options allows arule designer to find a reasonable compromise between performance and expressiveness RULES TEMPLATES OpenRules provides a powerful yet intuitive mechanism for compactly organizing enterprise level business rules repositories Rules templates allow rule designers to write the rules logic once and use it many times With rules templates you may completely hide rules implementation details from business users OpenRules supports several rules templatization mechanisms from 730 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual simple rules tables that inherit the exact structure of templates to partial template implementations Simple Rules Templates Rule templates are regular rules tables that serve as structural prototypes for many other rules tables with the same structure but different content rules A simple rules template usually does not have rules at all but only specifies the table structure and implementation details for conditions and actions Thus a simple rules template contains the first 5 rows of a regular decision table as in the following example Signature with parameters Conditions and Actions i
9. c cccccccccccssssssececeeeescessssseseeeeeeesessesseaseeeeeeens 75 Templates for Multi Hit Rule Tables ccecssececsssseeecessseeececssaeeecesseeeecesseaaeeeenees 76 Partial Template Implementation 3 scccsiweccsciceessccesteosedeceteseccseccsevececssscxsoeosstecetessesevesssvscoeess 77 Templates with Optional Conditions and ACctions ssscccssssseccccsssececcssssceeeesseceseessesesees 79 Templates for the Default Decision Tables ssssccssssssccssssscccssssccesssseceecssseceeesseseeeens 80 DECISION TEMPlate cicuccc cesezsessannveccesedesdbevsuvededalescdasseuesdbeneev coane sdsteusdevsesesouedenuses eviesys 80 Decision Execution Templates riesia rai na ei keria 82 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Template Customization ccccccccccccesessensesecececeeessesesaesececeesceesesaeaeeeeeeseeesessaaeeeeeeeens 83 Dia Modeling nea a a a ee AAEE nies SISE REN 84 Datatype and Data Tables sviicisisccccssccscscsscaccecsscsccscsscaccsassssscacessacsccsessscccssssscseaessssoosssassosaess 85 How Datatype Tables Are Organized csssssccsssssscccssssceccecssccccecssseccecssseccacssssesansseseeeess 88 How Data Tables Are Organized scccsissssceccssssesisacsesecssassecdiassescsssassesssassesnssaassessoassesecoasss 90 Predefined Datatypes iis cccicitscessvecccseiete cuivcetecdeieitscusvkececvetete ooxdsveteudeceiecsessewentsdetecovsveeoeess 92 How to Define Data for Aggregated Datatype sssccccssss
10. Hot Warm Cold Very Cold Representing Domains of Numbers If you need to represent domains of integer or double values there are several predefined types similar to DomainString e DomainInt e DomainiIntc e DomainDouble e DomainDoublec For example here is a condition column with eligible loan terms Eligible Loan Terms 24 36 72 36 72 72 710 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Using Java Expressions The use of Java expressions provides the powerful ability to perform calculations and test for complex logical conditions While the writing of expressions requires some technical knowledge it does not require the skills of a programmer Real world experience shows that business analysts frequently have a need to write these expressions themselves It is up to the rules table designer to decide whether to show the expressions to business people or to hide them from view Let s consider a decision table for Income Validation from the provided standard example Loan1 Rules void ValidatelncomeRules LoanRequest loan Customer customer Ci A1 customer monthlylncome 0 8 loan incomeValidationResult customer monthlyDebt gt loan amount loan term result boolean condition String result IF as Income is Sufficient for the Loan No UNSUFFICIENT Yes SUFFICIENT Here the actual income validation expression is hidden from business people
11. Inc OpenRules User Manual Business and Technical Views OpenRules rules tables have two views 1 Business View 2 Technical View These two views are implemented using Excel s outline buttons 1 and 2 at the top left corner of every worksheet see the figure below This figure represents a business view no technical details about the implementation are provided For example from this view it is hard to tell for sure what greeting will be generated at 11 o clock Good Morning or Good Afternoon If you push the Technical View button 2 or the button on the left you will see the hidden rows with the technical details of this rules table oid E TERNS SS RTI int hour R So The technical view opens hidden rows 4 6 that contain the implementation details In particular you can see that both Hour From and Hour To are included in the definition of the time intervals Different types of tables have different technical views The technical view is oriented to a technical user who is not expected to be a programming guru but rather a person with a basic knowledge of the C family of languages which includes Java Let s walk through these rows step by step 500 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Row Condition and Action Headers see row 4 in the table above The initial columns with conditions usually start with the letter C for example C1 Condition 1 The columns with actions usua
12. fileName decision saveRunLog true decision execute decision log Decision decision getOutput decision printSavedRunLog results txt It creates and executes the decision model based on the main xls file called DecisionTest xls that defines decision objects as below 131 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionObject decisionObjects Customer getCustomer decision Response _ _ i _ getResponse decision Method Response getResponse Decision decision Method Customer getCustomer Decision decision As you can see they point to the decision objects defined directly in Excel This file also includes the Environment table with references to Datatype xls and TestData xls Environment _ include Main_xls _ include Rules_xls include Datatypes xls include TestData_xls include Glossary xls Now we can use the same model to generate the proper Java interface Here is the main method of the class GenerateDecisionInterface java public class GenerateDecisionInterface public static void main String args String fileName file rules main DecisionTest xls Decision decision new Decision DetermineCustomerGreeting fileName String packageName hello String path src hello decision generateDecisionObjects packageName path This code uses the Decision s method generateDecisionObjects to generate the proper Java interface based on the
13. following values Execute the default value for Decision Table execution templates Solve for execution of decision models using OpenRules Rule Solver The template DecisionTemplate contains two mandatory action columns with names ActionPrint and ActionExecute and three optional columns with the names Condition ConditionAny and ActionAny Here is an example of this template Because you can use the same column Condition or ConditionAny many times y y y in your own decision and sub decision tables you may create tables of type Decision that are based on this template with virtually unlimited complexity 81 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Execution Templates The file DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls contains the following rules templates for execution of different types of the decision tables DecisionTableTemplate Decision decision a template for execution of the single hit tables of the type DecisionTable DecisionTablelTemplate Decision decision a template for execution of the multi hit tables of the type DecisionTablel DecisionTable2Template Decision decision a template for execution of the rule sequence tables of the type DecisionTable2 customInitializeDecision Decision decision the method that can be used for custom initialization of decisions customInitializeDecision
14. Eligible for all people younger than 17 But for 16 year olds living in Florida the third rule will override the variable again to Eligible It is also very convenient to use multi hit decision tables to accumulate some data For example the following decision table accumulates Applicant Credit Score based on 4 different conditions 38 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTableMultiHit ApplicantCreditScoreDecisionT able Applicant Number of Default Payments in Last 12 Months Note that the operator increments the score using a value provided by the proper row rule of the last column DecisionTableSequence There is one more type of decision table DecisionTable2 or DecisionTableSequence that is similar to DecisionTablel but allows the actions of already executed rules to affect the conditions of rules specified below them DecisionTable2 supports the following rules execution logic 1 Rules are evaluated in top down order and if a rule condition is satisfied then the rule actions are immediately executed 2 Rule overrides are permitted The action of any executed rule may override the action of any previously executed rule Thus you may make two important observations about the behavior of the DecisionTable2 e Rule actions can affect the conditions of other rules 390 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual e There could be rule over
15. RulesRepository all rules tables deal with Java objects defined in the Java package myjava packagel Therefore the proper Environment table inside file Main xls see above contains a property import java with value myjava packagel 100 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Usually you only place common Java imports inside the main xls file If some included xls files use special Java classes you can reference them directly from inside their own Environment tables Imports from XML Along with Java OpenRules allows you to use objects defined in XML files For example the standard sample project HelloXMLCustomer uses an object of the type Customer defined in the file Customer xml located in the project classpath lt Customer name Robinson gender Female maritalStatus Married age 55 gt The xls file HelloCustomer xls that deals with this object includes the following Environment table Environment import static com openrules tools Methods classpath Customer xml importjava_ hello Response include _ include HelloRules xls The property import schema specifies the location of the proper xml file in this case Classpath Customer xml Of course it could be any other location in the file system that starts with the prefix file This example also tells you that this Excel file uses 1 static Java methods defined in the standard OpenRules pack
16. She O firstName FirstName John Mary middlelnitial Middle Initial IN A lastName LastName Smith Smith Ca appartment Apt 3C_ Ye cm Edison eE E e zipCode_ ZipCode 08840 Oooo 25 Maple Street appartment We can reference to these objects inside rules or forms as in the following snippets out personaliInformation He lastName if personaliInformation She state equals NJ You may use one datatype such as PersonalInfo to define a more complex aggregate datatype like TaxReturn in this example 86 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Personalinfo spouse ce L SS cl d d Datatype TaxReturn ouble taxablelnterest ouble unemploymentCompensation double adjustedGrossincome pear taxWithheld earnedincomeCredit ef You may even create an object of the new composite type TaxReturn using references to the objects He and She as in this example Data TaxReturn taxReturns Taxable k Earned Income He He She i 32026 1450 4530 230 Now we can reference these objects from inside rules or forms as in the following snippet out taxReturn 0 taxPayer lastName The above tables may remind you of traditional database tables simply presented in Excel While these examples give you an intuitive understanding of OpenRules Datatype and Data tables the next sections will provide their formal descriptions 87 OpenRules
17. amaray ar velue with an array To compare two arrays Returns true when the first Does Not array decision variable does Include Include Not AU not include all elements of the second array value within decision table cell To compare an array with an If the decision variables do not have an expected type for a particular operator the proper syntax error will be diagnosed Note that the operators Is One Of Is Not One Of Include Exclude and Does Not Include work with arrays of values separated by commas Sometimes a comma could be a part of the value and you may want to use a different separator In this case you may simply add your separator character at the end of the operator For example if you want to check that your variable Address is if one of San Jose CA or Fort Lauderdale FL you may use the operator Is One Of with 18 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual an array of possible addresses described as San Jose CA Fort Lauterdale FL Instead of the character you may use any other character separator The following operators can be used inside decision table conclusions Assigns one value to the conclusion decision variable When you use or inside Excel write or to avoid confusion with Excel s own formulas Assigns one or more values listed through commas to the conclusion variable that is expected to be an array Adds one or mo
18. as HelloJsp HelloForms and HelloWS To use OpenRulesEngine inside your Java code you need to add an import statement for com openrules ruleengine OpenRulesEngine and make sure that openrules all jar is in the classpath of your application This jar and all 3rd party jar files needed for OpenRules execution can be found in the subdirectory openrules config 1lib of the standard OpenRules installation You may create an instance of OpenRulesEngine inside of your Java program using the following constructor public OpenRulesEngine String xlsMainFileName where xlsMainFileName parameter defines the location for the main xls file To specify a file location OpenRules uses an URL pseudo protocol notation with prefixes such as file classpath http ftp db etc Typically your main xls file Main xls is located in the subdirectory rules main of your Java project In this case its location may be defined as file rules main Main xls If your main xls file is located directly in the project classpath you may define its location as classpath Main xls Usea URL like http www example com rules Main xls when Main xls is located at a website All other xls files that can be invoked from this main file are described in the table Environment using include statements You may also use other forms of the OpenRulesEngine constructor For example the constructor OpenRulesEngine St
19. be added to a preliminary created instance of the DecisionBook class Each new decision table will be placed in a new worksheet of the same workbook Then you may simply save this decision book as an Excel file Example with Explanations Let s first consider an example provided in the standard OpenRules installation as the DecisionWithGeneratedRules project In this project we want to run a Java application GenerateRules java to generate the following decision tables in Excel DecisionTable DefineGreeting ee Then Current Hour Current Hour Result Good Night DecisionTable CheckGreeting ConditionVarOperValue Message lt Var gt lt Oper gt lt Value gt Message Result Is Not Good Afternoon Error Expected Good Afternoon Result Is Good Afternoon Good Result Here is the proper Java class GenerateRules java import com openrules table external DecisionBook public class GenerateRules public static void main String args DecisionBook decisionBook new DecisionBook decisionBook addDecisionTable DefineGreeting table DecisionTableTemplate template new String If If Then labels new String Current Hour Current Hour Result variables new String rules new String gt 0 lt 11 Good Morning new String gt 12 lt 17 Good Afternoon new String gt 18 lt 21 Good Evening new String gt 22 lt 24 Good Nigh
20. cecicasanainecdcccaudavecetcacssstalsavaaedeess wastes taraia asea atakao creates 115 Decision Parameters siina aE a sees E E EEE REENA 115 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DECISION RUNS weccisnnsseeaseseccassinusteedecacecansnesaenssense cae scesatneceaaeenitinaweeeddensventseusdendecatecansiusise 116 DECISION TOSES i ocitccescisedeccaeSiwcescustecageantecdscieessdenadia degen a aaea a aiaa 117 Executing Decision Methods From Excel cccccccccesssssssececeeeeessessseeeeeeeessessessaeees 117 D CISION GIOSSANY sisenta a EA EREE E a 118 Business Concepts and Decision Objects cccccccecsssssseceeeeecessessneeeeeesessessessnaeees 119 Changing Decision Variables Types between Decision RUNS ssececessseeeeeeeenees 120 Decision Execution MOd S asise A E EEE E 121 Frequently Used Decision Methods cccssssecececssnececessececseseeeeeeesenaeeseesaaeeeeeees 121 Generating Excel Files with new Decision Tables sscccssssccccssssccccesssssccecssseccensseseeeees 122 Example with Explanations ccccccccccccssssssssecececeesesesseseseeeeseessesseaseeseeseseessessaaeess 123 Formal DecisiONBook API c sccccccccscessesssecececeescsessaeseseeeeseeseesssasaeeeeeescessessnaeees 125 Logging AP lisssscisccceccescecss cass ccescasccesscescccessactccesdereccessesccesscescccessactecesdssecdessescceessescacessasceeds 126 JSR 94 Implementation i sc scccsscsecdcessseccccsssvcccecsssccccossaccuedssaceacess
21. its actual value the fact that the cell is not empty indicates that the condition is true For example in the following table from the standard project VacationDays Rules void DecisionTable Test t only actions marked with X will be executed You can use any other character instead of X Representing String Domains Let s express a condition that validates if a customer s internal credit score is one of several acceptable rates such as A B C and D F To avoid the necessity to create multiple sub columns for similar conditions we may put all possible string values inside the same cell and separate them by spaces or commas Here is an example of such a condition DomainString dot Internal Credit Rating ABC DF DFG 700 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Here we use the predefined type DomainString that defines a domain of strings words separated by whitespaces The method contains String string of the class DomainString checks if the parameter string is found among all strings listed in the current domain You also may use the method containsIgnoreCase String string that allows you to ignore case during the comparison If possible values may contain several words one may use the predefined type DomainStringC where C indicates that commas will be used as a string separator For example we may use DomainStringC to specify a domain such as Very Hot
22. map with names and types of the map s attributes public HashMap lt String String gt getNamedTypes Sets a value for the attribute converting a string to the proper type param name a string param value a string af public void setAttribute String name String value param name return a string value of the attribute with a given name public String getAttribute String name param name a string return a type of the attribute with a given name public String getType String name return an underlying decision object of the class with name getBusinesConcept ef public DecisionObject getDecisionObject return a string with the map s attributes and their types zi public String showTypes Thus for every input output type you may set all necessary attributes using their values represented as strings The map is smart enough to check that such values are converted to the correct attribute type If not the method setAttribute name value will produce a RuntimeException You also may ask a business map to give you an attribute type by its name and then to validate if the actual value has or can be cast to this type before executing the decision 136 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The standard installation includes two more projects that demonstrate how to generate and use business maps e DecisionPatientTherapyWithBusiness Maps e Dec
23. much simpler in comparison with the functionally identical decision table defined above we need to make an implicit assumption that the lower and upper bounds for the intervals 0 11 11 17 etc are included Expression inside Decision Tables OpenRules allows you to use expressions formulas in the decision table cells For example if you want to concatenate variables Greeting Salutation and a customer s name to define a result of your greeting decision you may use the following expression DecisionTable DefineResult op Greeting Salutation customer decision name Here the macros Greeting and Salutation refer to the already calculated values of the decision variables Greeting and Salutation the method customer decision defined in Excel returns the object Customer whose name will be added to the Result In general the expressions can be presented in one of the following formats expression or expression where expression can be written using standard Java expressions and macros for decision variables Typically you use expressions with preceding in 20 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual conditions that expect a text expression the standard Java type String When it is necessary to return other types such a int double or Date the expression may be preceded by with only 1 semicolon Note Actually exp
24. 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 OpenRules Inc Datatype Personallnfo sting middlelnitial OpenRules User Manual Now we can create several objects of this type PersonalInfo using the following data table Data Personallnfo personallnformation oem iHe
25. s row Sub Columns and Sub Rows for Dynamic Arrays One table column can consist of several sub columns see sub columns Min and Max in the example above You may efficiently use the Excel merge mechanism to combine code cells and to present them in the most intuitive way Here is an example with an unlimited number of sub columns 64 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual As you can see condition C6 contains 4 sub columns for different combinations of rates The cells in the Condition code parameters and display values rows are merged You can insert more sub columns use Excel s menu Insert to handle more rate combinations if necessary without any changes in the code The parameter row is defined as a String array String rates The actual values of the parameters should go from left to right and the first empty value in a sub column should indicate the end of the array rates You can see the complete example in the rules table Rule Family 212 in the file Loan1 xls If your rules table has a horizontal format you may use multiple sub rows in a similar way see the example in file UpSell xls Using Expressions inside Rules Tables OpenRules allows a rules designer to use almost natural language expressions inside rules tables to represent intervals of numbers strings dates etc You also may use Java expressions whenever necessary Integer and Real Intervals You may use plain English express
26. text String text Something To express the OR logic if A gt 5 B gt 10 do something you may use the rules table Rules void testOR int a int b System out printIn text See Sometimes instead of creating a decision table it is more convenient to represent rules using simple Java expressions inside Method tables For example the above rules table may be easily represented as the following Method table Method void testOR int a int b if a gt 5 b gt 10 System out printIn Something Horizontal and Vertical Rules Tables Rules tables can be created in one of two possible formats Vertical Format default Horizontal Format Based on the nature of the rules table a rules creator can decide to use a vertical format as in the examples above where concrete rules go vertically one after another or a horizontal format where Condition and Action are located in the 62 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual rows and the rules themselves go into columns Here is an example of the proper horizontal format for the same rules table helloWorld Rules void helloVYorldfint hour horizontal Howton o o e e Ps EED n y ovr y az f a Good Morning Good Afternoon Good Evening Good Night OpenRules automatically recognizes that a table has a vertical or a horizontal format You can use Excel s Copy and Paste Special feature to transpose a rules table from one format t
27. that uses a publish subscribe paradigm for automatic invocation of different web services Embedding OpenRules in Java Applications OpenRules allows you to incorporate the business rules represented in an Excel based rules repository into any Java application Using OpenRules Java API a Java application can invoke a rule engine to execute different business rules and receive the results back through Java objects that were passed to the engine as parameters The sample project HelloJava demonstrates how to invoke OpenRulesEngine from a stand alone Java program The sample project HelloJSP demonstrates how to invoke OpenRulesEngine from a JSP based web application In general with OpenRulesEngine extracted business logic remains a natural extension of a Java application business rules can be invoked similar to regular Java methods 128 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Deploying Rules as Web Services A service oriented Web application implements the endpoint of a fine grained Web service If your system is based on a Service oriented architecture you will probably prefer to treat business rules as a special type of loosely coupled web services that support your decision making processes We will use the term Rule Service for business rules deployed as a web service With OpenRules you define and maintain your business rules using a combination of Excel Java and Eclipse You may test your rules as a stand alone applica
28. the standard file log4j properties that by default looks like below log4j rootLogger INFO stdout log4j appender stdout org apache log4j ConsoleAppender log4j appender stdout layout org apache log4j PatternLayout log4j appender stdout layout ConversionPattern m n log4j logger org open1 DEBUG You may replace INFO to DEBUG and uncomment the last line to see OpenRules debugging information To redirect all logs into a file results txt you may change the file log4j properties as follows log4j rootLogger INFO stdout log4j appender stdout org apache 1log4j ConsoleAppender log4j appender stdout org apache 1log4j FileAppender log4j appender stdout File results txt log4j appender stdout layout org apache log4j PatternLayout log4j appender stdout layout ConversionPattern m n uncomment the next line to see OpenRules debug messages 1log4j logger org openl DEBUG You may control how talkative your decision is by setting decision s parameter Trace For example if you add the following setting to the above Java launcher decision put trace Off just before calling decision executeQ then your output will be much more compact xxx Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Calculate Internal Variables Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Validate Income Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Summarize ADD
29. type DecisionTableRanking DecisionT ableRanking DefineDocumentAccess ConditionCompareRanks Conc If lt rank1 gt lt stronger weaker gt lt rank2 gt Diagnostic Need Sensitivity Level Diagnostic Need Sensitivity Level To define Stronger Weaker relations between these ranks this decision table will automatically invoke the decision table with the dynamically defined name Compare lt rank1 gt With lt rank2 gt after removing all spaces The benefits of these new types of decision tables become clear when you think about supporting hundreds of similar ranking lists These tables may cover complex relationships between multiple ranking lists and at the same time they remain easy to understand and to be maintained by business users The complete working example DecisionRankingLists with the proper custom templates see file RankTemplates xls is included into the standard OpenRules installation Defining and Using Rule Identification You may associate with any rules a unique identificator ID and later on refer to this ID in the conclusion columns To do that you may use the column of the type as the very first column of your decision table If you put any text 440 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual ID in front of the rule inside this column then this ID will be assigned to this rule but only when it actually will be executed Then you may to your rule IDs in the action columns
30. want to pass this collection to a decision that will process all customers from this collection in one run and will calculate such attributes as minSalary totalSalary numberOfRichCustomers and similar attributes which are specified for the entire collection Each customer within this collection can be processed by the following rules DecisionTable1 EvaluateOneCustomer PT sisson Mae ssam iin sain from fefen gt i 1 f f Pay attention that we use here a multi hit table DecisionTable1 so both rules will be executed The first one unconditionally calculates the Total Salary Maximal and Minimal Salaries The second rule defines a number of rich customers inside the collection To accumulate the proper values we use the existing operator and newly introduced operators Min and Max To execute the above decision table for all customers we will utilize a new action ActionRulesOnArray within the following decision table DecisionTable CaiculateCustomertotals Conclusion Conclusion Conclusion line Hee TEF 7 17 y f me ActionRulesOnArray CECE OE EraluateoneCustomer Here the first 3 actions conclusions simply define initial values of collection attributes The last action has 3 sub columns 42 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The name of the array of objects as it is defined in the glossary Customers The type of those objects Cust
31. yet another rule language as well as another proprietary rules management GUI Instead OpenRules relied on commonly used tools such as MS Excel Google Docs and Eclipse integrated with the standard Java Using OpenRules formats business users can represent and test their decision models directly in Excel with minimal of no coding This approach enabled OpenRules users to create and maintain inter related decision models in accordance with the latest decision modeling standards OpenRules from the very beginning supported two views of its decision tables Business View in which business people may express business rules using business terms only Technical View usually hidden in which technical people could place Java snippets to specify the exact semantics of rule conditions and actions Then in March of 2008 OpenRules Release 5 introduced Rule Templates Templates allowed a business analyst to create hundreds and thousands of business rules based on a small number of templates supported by software developers Rule templates minimized the use of Java snippets and hid them from business users Rule templates were a significant step in minimizing rule repositories and clearly separating the roles of business analysts and software specialists in maintaining the rules In March of 2011 OpenRules introduced Release 6 which finally moved control over business logic to business users OpenRules 6 effectively removed any Java codin
32. you may set the proper execution mode Here is a code example String fileName file rules main Decision xls System setProperty OPENRULES MODE Execute Decision decision new Decision DetermineDecisionVariable fileName By default this property is set to Execute If you want to use an inferential rule engine known as Rule Solver you should use System setProperty OPENRULES MODE Solve Read more about Rule Solver here Frequently Used Decision Methods Below is a list of the public Decision s method frequently used within decision templates Access methods getGlossary the method that returns the glossary getDecisionObject String nameofBusinessConcept the method that returns a business object associated with the BusinessConcept isTraceOn returns true if the tracing of the decision is on Methods that return values of decision variables based on their names 1210 int get OpenRules Inc nt String name OpenRules User Manual double getReal String name String getString String name 5 Date get boolean get Date String name Bool String name Methods that set values of decision variables based on their names void void void void void set Int String name setReal String name int value double value setString String name String value set set Date String
33. DK 1 6 or higher Apache Ant 1 6 or higher MS Excel or OpenOffice or Google Docs for rules and forms editing only Eclipse SDK optional for complex project management only Sample Projects The complete OpenRules installation includes the following workspaces openrules decisions decision projects openrules rules various rules projects openrules dialog rules based web questionnaires openrules web rules based web applications amp web services openrules solver constraint based decisions with Rule Solver openrules cloud cloud based applications Each project has its own subdirectory e g DecisionHello OpenRules libraries and related templates are located in the main configuration project openrules config included in each workspace A detailed description of the sample projects is provided in the Installation Guide Main Configuration Project 141 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules provides a set of libraries jar files and Excel based templates in the folder openrules con Supporting Librari fig to support different projects es All OpenRules jar files are included in the folder openrules config lib For the decision management projects you need at least the following jars e commons ogging 1 1l jar e log4j 1 2 15 jar e commons lang 2 3 jar e poi 3 10 FINAL 20140208 jar e poi ooxml 3 10 FINAL 20140208 jar
34. Decision DeterminePatientT herapy Define Medication DefineMedication tinine Clearance CalculateCreatinineClearance Define Dosing DefineDosing Check Drug Interaction WarnAboutDrugInteraction The decision DeterminePatientTherapy consists of four sub decisions e Define Medication that is implemented using a decision table DefineMedication e Define Creatinine Clearance that is implemented using a decision table DefineCreatinineClearance e Define Dosing that is implemented using a decision table DefineDosing e Check Drug Interaction that is implemented using a decision table WarnAboutDrugInteraction The table Decision has two columns Decisions and Execute Decision Tables those are not keywords and you can use any other titles for these columns The first column contains the names of all our sub decisions here we can use any combinations of words as decision names The second column contains exact names of decision tables that implement these sub decisions The decision table names cannot contain spaces or special characters except for underscore OpenRules allows you to use multiple embedded tables of the type Decision to define more complex decisions For example a top level decision that defines the main decision variable may be defined through several sub decisions about related variables Decision DecisionMain Define Variab
35. Glossary glossary decision getGlossary Decision Parameters The class Decision is implemented as a subclass of the standard Java class HashMap Thus you can put any object into the decision similarly as we did above decision put taxReturn taxReturn You may access any object previously put into the decision by calling the method get name as in the following example TaxReturn taxReturn TaxReturn decision get taxReturn 1150 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual You may set a special parameter decision put trace Off to tell your decision to turn off the tracing You may use On to turn it on again Decision Runs After defining decision parameters you may execute the decision as follows decision execute This method will execute your decision starting from the table of type Decision whose name was specified as the first parameter of the decision s constructor You may reset the parameters of your decision and execute it again without the necessity of constructing a new decision This is very convenient for multi transactional systems where you create a decision once by instantiating its glossary and then you execute the same decision multiple times but with different parameters To make sure that it is possible the Decision s method execute calls Excel s method decisionObjects each time before actually executing the decision If you know that the types o
36. However a similar rule sequence 60 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual will fail because when x is equal to 1 the first rule will make it 2 and then the second rules will make it 1 again Relationships among Rules Tables In most practical cases business rules are not located in one file or in a single rule set but rather are represented as a hierarchy of inter related rules tables located in different files and directories see Business Rules Repository Frequently the main Excel file contains a main method that specifies the execution logic of multiple decision tables You may use the table Decision for the same purposes In many cases the rule engine can execute decision tables directly from a Java program see API Because OpenRules interprets rules tables as regular methods designers of rules frequently create special processing flow decision tables to specify the conditions under which different rules should be executed See examples of processing flow rules in such sample projects as Loan2 and LoanDynamics in the workspace openrules web Simple AND OR Conditions in Rules Tables All conditions inside the same row rule are considered from left to right using the AND logic For example to express if A gt 5 amp amp B gt 10 do something you may use the rules table 61 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules void testAND int a int b System out printin
37. ITIONAL DEBT RESEARCH IS NEEDED from DetermineLoanQualificationResult xxx OpenRules made a decision You may also change output by modifying the tracing details inside the proper decision templates in the configuration files DecisionTemplates xls and DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls Rules Repository Search 34 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual To analyze rules within one Excel files you may effectively use familiar Search and Replace features provided by Excel or Google Docs When you want to search across multiple Excel files and folders you may use a free while powerful tool called IceTeaReplacer that can be very useful for doing search amp replace in OpenRules repositories Here is an example of its graphical interface Replace with Twe Search path C _SourceRepo openndes solver DMN Primer 5D Word Excel C _SourceRepo operrules solver DMN Primer vepository Glossary ds C _SourceRepo operrules solve DMN Pamer vepository Decisions Pre Post Bureau Risk Appication Score Rules xis Options F Match whole word oniy E iore case M Backup before replace E Dont search in subfolders Hold CTRL or SHIFT buttons to select You may also double click an item to open t Done searching Found 3 matches Select needed files and click replace w The following options are available e Perform search before replacing e Match whole w
38. Inc OpenRules User Manual Wen by putting in front of your Java expression for example driver aget l Make sure that the expression s type corresponds to the parameter type If you want the expression to produce a String type use instead of For example you may write an expression driver age 1 that will be interpreted as a Java concatenation ww driver aget l Empty cells inside rules means whatever or not applicable the proper condition will be considered automatically satisfied An action with an empty value will be ignored If the parameter has type String and you want to enter a space character you must explicitly enter one of the following expressions W n or i W W or W W R Note Excel is always trying to guess the type of text inside its cells and automatically converts the internal representation to something that may not be exactly what you see For example Excel may use a scientific format for certain numbers To avoid a strange behavior try to explicitly define the format text for the proper Excel cells How Rules Tables Are Executed The rules inside rules tables are executed one by one in the order they are placed in the table The execution logic of one rule row in the vertical table is the following IF ALL conditions are satisfied THEN execute ALL actions If at least one condition is violated evaluation of the code produces false all other
39. Inc OpenRules User Manual You may use a type of table Variable These tables are similar to the Data tables but instead of arrays of variables they allow you to create separate instances of objects directly in Excel files Here is a simple example Variable Customer mary _maritalStatus Mary Brown 5 Female Single The variable mary has type Customer and can be used inside rules or passed back from an OpenRulesEngine to a Java program as a regular Java object As usual the object type Customer can be defined as a Java class an Excel Datatype or an xml structure How Datatype Tables Are Organized Every Datatype table has the following structure Datatype tableName The first signature row consists of two merged cells and starts with the keyword Datatype The tableName could be any valid one word identifier of the table a combination of letters and numbers The rows below consist of two cells with an attribute type and an attribute name Attribute types can be the basic Java types boolean char int double long String java lang String Date java util Date 88 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual You may also use data types defined in other Excel Datatype tables in any Java class with a public constructor with a single parameter of the type String as one dimensional arrays of the above types The datatype Personallnfo gives an example of a very simple datatype We can
40. OPEN BFA mh A Oh OpPENRULES Open Source Business Decision Management System Release 6 3 3 User Manual OpenRules Inc www openrules com May 2015 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Table of Contents INTO GUCUION MPAA EE AAAA 6 Brief HiStOry siisscicsiscccccsscceccccsdecccstscevccessssvecsssscvcssssesccstedavecsvssasecsesssacdevsesacssdesavedivessssdensdanis 6 OpenRules COMPONENES TTT 7 DOCUMENT CONVENTIONS ws ssssisissrssaisssnsvisssensoisossvss dssskssisasanosdd isko sik is idis akoa b aussissa ssis 8 Core CONCEDES is ticcsccvesteccoscovsccvescdvscodsecsvisesecestedeecdetoatedsvcsdsecdedevvedsodssoossensssvdedasesnedasevens 8 Decision Modeling and EX Cution 0sssscccossssccccesssscccccssssccccesssssccccssssccccsssssscsasssseees 9 Starting With DECISION sssccc2ccsscececiseecseceshecccsieseccddesscdeccussarcecebsecweuaesscccuush ensecuseeraceubrsdeeuussancs 10 Defining Decision Tables wisiccsisssccccscsscccsescsccacsssscccssssssctecdavescwedssccassdseccovedss sccacdsxecovssssecoeasss 13 Decision Table Execution LOgIC 0 cccccesessscececececsessaeeececeescseseaeseeeceeseessesssaeeeseeeens 15 AND OR COGS wicssiisnin snared ciiaanpnssdesivaceeenipniasmieniansentinas vaonaaaaniniasaacniioemnniawiamaes 16 Decision Table Operators cc cccccccccscssssssneseceeeescsesseaesececeesceeseeseeeeeessessessaeeeeeeeens 16 Conditions and Conclusions without Operators cssccecsess
41. OpenRules User Manual outsideCreditScore 0 999 Customer Credit Card Balance creditCardBalance 1000000 100000000 Education Loan Balance educationLoanBalance 1000000 100000000 Internal Credit Rating internalCreditRating A B C D F Internal Analyst Opinion internalAnalystOpinion High Mid Low Income Validation Result incomeValidationResult SUFFICIENT UNSUFFICIENT Debt Research Result Request debtResearchResult High Mid Low Loan Qualification Result loanQualificationResult QUALIFIED NOT QUALIFIED Total Income fatatncome 0 500000 All rows for the concepts such as Customer and Request are merged The third column Attribute contains technical names of the decision variables these names will be used to connect our decision variables with attributes of objects used by the actual applications for which a decision has been defined The application objects could be defined in Java in Excel tables in XML etc The decision does not have to know about it the only requirement is that the attribute names should follow the usual naming convention for identifiers in languages like Java it basically means no spaces allowed The last column Domain is optional but it can be useful to specify which values are allowed to be used for different decision variables Decision variable domains can be specified using the naming convention for the intervals and domains described below The above
42. Password Protected Excel Files Some Excel workbooks might be encrypted protected by a password to prevent other people from opening or modifying these workbooks Usually it s done using ca may access password protected workbooks by calling the following method just Excel Button and then Prepare plus Encrypt Document OpenRules Engine before creating an engine instance OpenRulesEngine setCurrentUserPassword password 1120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Instead of password you should use the actual password that protects your main and or other Excel files Only one password may be used by all protected Excel files that will be processed by one instance of the OpenRulesEngine created after this call This call does not affect access to unprotected files The standard project HelloJavaProtected provides an example of the protected Excel file use the word password to access the file HelloCustomer xls Note The static method setCurrentUserPassworad of the class OpenRulesEngine actually sets the BIFF8 encryption decryption password for the current thread The use of a null string will clear the password Engine Attachments You may attach any Java object to the OpenRulesEngine using methods setAttachment Object attachment and getAttachment Engine Version You may receive a string with the current version number of the OpenRulesEngine using the method getVersion Dynamic Rules Up
43. Rules Tables Are Recognized OpenRules recognizes the tables inside Excel files using the following parsing algorithm 1 The OpenRules parser splits spreadsheets into parsed tables Each logical table should be separated by at least one empty row or column at the start of the table Table parsing is performed from left to right and from top to bottom The first non empty cell e cell with some text in it that does not belong to a previously parsed table becomes the top left corner of a new parsed table 2 The parser determines the width height of the table using non empty cells as its clues Merged cells are important and are considered as one cell If the top left cell of a table starts with a predefined keyword see the table below then such a table is parsed into an OpenRules table 3 All other tables i e those that do not begin with a keyword are ignored and may contain any information The list of all keywords was described above OpenRules can be extended with more table types each with their own keyword While not reflected in the table recognition algorithm it is good practice to use a black background with a white foreground for the very first row All cells in this row should be merged so that the first row explicitly specifies the table width We call this row the table signature The text inside this row consisting of one or more merged cells is the table signature that starts with a keyword T
44. Run Decision decision the method that can be used for initialization of custom objects for every decision run finalizeDecision Decision decision the method that can be used for finalization of decision runs The template DecisionTableTemplate serves as a template for all standard single hit decision tables All columns in this template are conditional meaning their names are always required Here is an example of the first two rows of this template with several typical columns Rules String DecisionTableTemplate Decision decision The actual DecisionTable template is being upgraded with new OpenRules release and is much larger Please look at the latest this and other decision table templates in the file openrules config DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls The template DecisionTable1Template serves as a template for all decision tables of type DecisionTable1 Here is an example the first two rows of this template Rules void DecisionTable1Template Decision decision 82 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The template DecisionTable2Template serves as a template for all decision tables of type DecisionTable2 Here is an example the first two rows of this template RuleSequence void DecisionTable2Template Decision decision You can use all these columns as many times as you wish when you may create concrete decision tables based on these templates Please ch
45. above decision objects Actually in this case two files will be generated src hello Customer java src hello Response java 132 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The package name for the generated Java classes was defined as hello and the relative path for the proper files was defined as src hello You may look at the generated files by clicking on the above links To execute the same decision model using these Java objects instead of Excel test cases we need to modify our main xls file So instead of DecisionTest xls we will use the file DecisionJava xls It should define the same decision objects slightly differently DecisionObject decisionObjects Customer getCustomer decision Response _ getResponse decision Method Customer getCustomer Decision decision return Customer decision get Customer Method Respons ponse Decision decision return Response decision get Response So now the decision objects should come not from Excel but rather should be created in Java and put in the decision using something like decision put Customer customer The proper Environment tables now should not include Datatype xls and TestData xls bit should include an import statement for the proper Java package Environment _ include Main_xls _ include Rules_xls _ finclude Glossary_xls So now we may use a Java launcher such as RunGeneratedJava java 133 Ope
46. age com openrules tools Methods 2 xml file classpath Customer xml 3 Java class Response from a package hello 101 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 4 include file HelloRules xls that is located in the subdirectory include of the directory where the main xls file is located Parameterized Rule Repositories An OpenRules repository may be parameterized in such a way that different rule workbooks may be invoked from the same repository under different circumstances For example let s assume that we want to define rules that offer different travel packages for different years and seasons We may specify a concrete year and a season by using environment variables YEAR and SEASON Our rules repository may have the following structure rules main Main xls rules common CommonRules x1s rules 2007 SummerRules xls rules 2007 WinterRules xls rules 2008 SummerRules xls rules 2008 WinterRules xls To make the OpenRulesEngine automatically select the correct rules from such a repository we may use the following parameterized include statements inside the Environment table of the main xls file rules main Main xls Environment import java season offers include common SalutationRules xls include YEAR SEASON Rules xls Thus the same rules repository will handle both WinterRules and SummerRules for different years A detailed example is provided in the standard project Se
47. ainly for decision analysis Reports are regenerated for every decision run During decision execution OpenRules automatically creates a sub directory report in your main project directory and generates a report inside this sub directory For every decision table including single hit multi hit and rule sequencing tables OpenRules generates a separate html file with the name Report lt n gt lt DecisionTableName gt html where n is an execution order number for this particular decision table For example for the sample project DecisionLoan OpenRules will generate the following files 310 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Report DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults htm Report01 DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults html Report02 CalculatelnternalVariables html Report03 DeterminelncomeValidationResult htm Report04 DetermineDebtResearchResult html Report05 DetermineLoanQualificationResult html The first file contains a list of links to all executed decision tables OpenRules Execution Report of Sat Jan 05 11 19 49 EST 2013 Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Decision Table a DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults 2 CalculateInternalV ariables 3 DetermineIncomeValidationResult DetermineDebtResearchResult s DetermineLoanQualificationResult Below are other generated files one per decision table with lists of rules rows that were actually executed De
48. alized Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Calculate Internal Variables Conclusion Total Debt Is 165600 0 Conclusion Total Income Is 360000 0 Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Validate Income Conclusion Income Validation Result Is SUFFICIENT Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Debt Research Conclusion Debt Research Result Is Low Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Summarize Conclusion Loan Qualification Result Is NOT QUALIFIED ADDITIONAL DEBT RESEARCH IS NEEDED from DetermineLoanQualificationResult xxx OpenRules made a decision This output shows all sub decisions and conclusion results for the corresponding decision tables Decision Analysis Decision Syntax Validation OpenRules automatically validates your decision by checking that there are no syntax error in the organization of all decision tables values inside decision variable cells correspond to the associated domains defined in the glossary OpenRules also provides a special plugin for Eclipse IDE a de facto standard project management tools for software developers within a Java based development environment Eclipse is used for code editing debugging and testing of rule projects within a single commonly known integrated development environment OpenRules has been designed to catch as many errors as possible in design rime vs run time when it is too late Eclipse Plugin diagnoses any err
49. allows you to use standard regular expressions Operators Match and No Match and their synonyms from the above table allow you to match the content of your text decision variables with custom patterns such as phone number or Social Security Number SSN Here is an example of a decision table that validates SSN DecisionTable testSSN Condition Message SSN Message No Match d 3 d 2 d 4 Invalid SSN Match d 3 d 2 d 4 Valid SSN The use of this decision table is described in the sample project DecisionHelloJava Defining Business Glossary While defining decision tables we freely introduced different decision variables assuming that they are somehow defined The business glossary is a special OpenRules table that actually defines all decision variables The Glossary table has the following structure Glossary glossary Variable The first column will simply list all of the decision variables using exactly the same names that were used inside the decision tables The second column associates different decision variables with the business concepts to which they belong Usually you want to keep decision variables that belong to the same business concept together and merge all rows in the column Business Concept that share the same concept Here is an example of a glossary from the standard OpenRules example DecisionLoan 23 OpenRules Inc
50. ameter One dimensional arrays of the above types Multiple parameters can be used in the situations when one code is used for several columns See the standard example Loan1 xls in the workspace openrules rules Row 5 Columns Display Values Text is used to give the column a definition that would be meaningful to another reader there are no restrictions on what text may be used Row 6 and below Rules with concrete values in cells Text cells in these rows usually contain literals that correspond to the parameter types For Boolean parameters you may enter the values TRUE or FALSE or equally Yes or No without quotations Cells with Dates can be specified using java util Date OpenRules uses java text DateFormat SHORT to convert a text defined inside a cell into java util Date Before OpenRules 4 1 we recommended our customers not to use Excel s Date format and define Date fields in Excel as Text fields The reason was the notorious Excel problem inherited from a wrong assumption that 1900 was a leap year As a result a date entered in Excel as 02 15 2004 could be interpreted by OpenRules as 02 16 2004 Starting with release 4 1 OpenRules correctly interprets both Date and Text Excel Date formats Valid Java expression Java snippets may be put inside table cells by one of two ways by surrounding the expression in curly brackets for example driver agetl 530 OpenRules
51. an see from this example the vertical format may not be very convenient when there are many attributes and not so many data rows In this case it could be preferable to use a horizontal format for the data tables Data datatypeName tableName at data data pejan Predefined Datatypes OpenRules provides predefined Java classes to create data tables for arrays of integers doubles and strings The list of predefined arrays includes 1 ArrayInt for arrays of integer numbers e g 92 OpenRules Inc Method int getTerms return Arraylint getValues terms Data Arraylnt terms value Term 2 ArrayDouble for arrays of real numbers e g 3 Method double getCosts return ArrayDouble getValues costs Data ArrayDouble costs value Costs 295 50 550 00 1 000 00 2 000 00 3 295 00 5 595 00 8 895 00 ArrayString for arrays of strings e g Method String getRegions return ArrayString getValues regions Data ArrayString regions value Region NORTHEAST MID ATLANTIC PACIFIC COAST OpenRules User Manual 93 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual These arrays are available from inside an OpenRules table by just calling their names getTerms getCostsQ getRegions You may also access these arrays from a Java program using this code OpenRulesEngine engine
52. any other location in your local file system that starts with the prefix file This example also tells you that this Excel file uses 104 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual l static Java methods defined in the standard OpenRules package com openrules tools Methods 2 xml file classpath Customer xm1 3 Java class Response from a package hello 4 include file HelloRules xls which is located in the subdirectory include of the directory where the main xls file is located The object of the type Customer can be created using the following API Customer customer Customer load classpath Customer xml1 You may use more complex structures defined in xml files For example the project HelloXMLPeop1le uses the following xml file lt xml version 1 0 encoding UTF 8 gt lt People type Array of Person s gt lt Person name Robinson gender Female maritalStatus Married age 55 gt lt Person name Robinson gender Female maritalStatus Single age 23 gt lt Person name Robinson gender Male maritalStatus Single age 17 gt lt Person name Robinson gender Male maritalStatus Single age 3 gt lt People gt The method that launches greeting rules for every Person from an array People is defined as Method void helloPeople int hour Calendar getinstance get Calendar HOUR_OF_DAY App app new App defineGreeting hour app define an
53. ases directly in Excel by specifying their own data object types and creating instances of test objects of these types Test data can be defined in Excel using tables Datatype and Data as described above in the section Defining Test Data Additionally OpenRules provides an 29 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual automatic comparison of expected and actual results of the decision execution You may define the expected execution results using special decision tables of the type DecisionTableTest Such tables may define your test cases containing 1 Test objects for different business concepts defined in the Glossary 2 The expected results for several decision variables For example the standard project DecisionPatientTherapy includes test Data objects visits and patients Data DoctorVisit visits 2716 2011 2725 2011 Data Patient patients Penicillin eer Oos Men Mary Smith 6 10o To specify expected results for each of these two tests we may add a decision table of the type DecisionTableTest that we will call testCases DecisionTableTest testCases Testi visits 0 patients 0 4442 Levofloxacin 48 04 Here the first column specifies test IDs next two columns specify test objects defined in the above Data tables and the last two columns specify the expected results In our Java launcher instead of putting test objects into the decision object and then calling decision exec
54. asonRules 102 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Integration with Java Objects OpenRules allows you to externalize business logic into xls files However these files can still use objects and methods defined in your Java environment For example in the standard example RulesRepository all rules tables deal with the Java object Appl defined in the Java package myjava packagel Therefore the proper Environment table inside file Main xls see above contains a property import java with the value myjava packagel Environment import java myjava packA1 elade SubCategoryA1 RulesA11 xls SubCategoryA1 RulesA12 xls The property import java allows you to define all classes from the package following the standard Java notation for example hello You may also import only the specific class your rules may need as in the example above You can define a separate property import java for every Java package used or merge the property import java into one cell with many rows for different Java packages Here is a more complex example Environment import static com openrules tools Methods my bom my impl my inventory com openrules ml my package MyClass com 3rdparty include Rules1 xls include Rules2 xls import java include Naturally the proper jar files or Java classes should be in the classpath of the Java application that uses these rule
55. avy Java artillery Being functionally similar to the JSP technology OpenRules provide a much 129 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual more intuitive and simplified way to create dynamic web content Creators of intelligent web interfaces do not have to know HTML JScript or even Java They will use only a commonly known Excel interface A non technical user can define complex web form layouts and the associated interaction logic in simple Excel tables OpenRules Forms presented in MS Excel spreadsheets are automatically translated into HTML pages without limitation on the expressiveness of HTML A web designer can use the power of decision tables to define complex relationships between fields inside web pages and or between different pages She can easily add standard or custom Excel based validators to check user input and inform a user about mistakes Based on user input and previously entered information the forms content and presentation sequence can be changed dynamically during the interaction process Generating Java Interfaces for Excel based Decision Models Usually an OpenRules based decision model can be created and tested by business analysts using Excel only After that they pass their tested model along with test cases to developers for integration with the actual IT system The developers look at the Glossary and test cases with Datatype and Data tables and use them as a prototype for their own Java objects Usua
56. ax added int min int max Parameter types and names Hour i Hour To Business names for From conditions and actions This rule will be added at the end of all template implementations tables The error message will be return instead of a greeting when all other rules fail A template for single hit tables could include more than one rule with different conditions they all will be added at the end of the template implementation tables to execute different default actions Templates for Multi Hit Rule Tables Multi hit rules tables execute all their rules that are satisfied allowing rules overrides However when conditions in all specified rules are not satisfied then a multi hit table usually uses the first rules to specify the default action The rules from the template will be executed before the actual rules defined inside the extended tables 760 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Let s consider an example You may notice that the rules tables above would not produce any greeting if the parameter hour is outside of the interval 0 24 Let s assume that in this case we want to always produce the default greeting How are you To do this simply add one default rule directly to the template Rules void defineGreeting App app int hour Cl min lt hour amp amp hour lt max int min int max This rule will be added at the beginning of all template implementations This greeting will
57. be produced if all other rules in the rules tables fail How are you A template for multi hit tables could include more than one default rule each with different conditions they all will be added to the beginning of the template implementation tables and will execute different default actions Partial Template Implementation Usually template implementation tables have exactly the same structure as the rules templates they extend However sometimes it is more convenient to build your own rules table that contains only some conditions and actions from already predefined rules templates This is especially important when a library of rules templates for a certain type of business is used to create a concrete rules based application How can this be achieved The template implementation table uses its second row to specify the names of the used conditions and actions from the template Let s consider an example The DebtResearchRules from the standard OpenRules example Loan Origination may be used as the following template 770 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules void DebtResearchRules LoanRequest loan Customer c C2 C3 c outsideCredit c mortgag Senresinit gA c loanHol op compare c op compare c e eHolder eq uals YN contains r c internalA loan debt ates c inte nalystOpin Research rnalCredit jion equals Result Rating level level der equal creditCardBala ducationLoanBa c ou
58. cc scicscccccciccseseteaseesstcedeossevaesessstedsesesulecavebdedaassdusnassesuebactsiusbaasesveoes 106 Rules Authoring and Maintenance Tools cccsssssscccssssececsssececcessececcsssecessessecessesseseeees 107 OpenRUleS API sctiiiccectiniecaiaionaieninn ie oaeiaennnieamoueAanE 108 VAVAD OC tisssscccsvsuseatscsieasasssessecssenstaessavscatecssnevessensseesdesshesseepossdeessessesschescsseseseaessauedeaseeesses 108 OpenRulesEngine API icsissccssidssccsssisecsssssssscsssssassosddssecsesdessseeedsstcsssdsascassdssssaasdesssavesssessacs 108 Engine CONSUUCLOMS seterstseriteesssicevatecaceceaeacdesteectacesseandecasieie cess A E E aA 108 Engine RUNS sasir aaao EEE SEE ESE EE 110 Undefined Method ccccccsessscccecececsesesseaecececcesseesesaeaeseeeeseessessaaeeeeeeeesesesesnaaeens 111 Accessing Password Protected Excel Files ccccscccccececessessnsececeeeesesssesseaeeeeeeeens 112 Engine Attachments 463s densdasusacdcenieacscaddagenedensonsdeddusuddddeaiaaeteagesdecchianieodunesatedianaasdes 113 Engine VeIrslOMaveveetcsvevaccasteveediave duane ve dacduavevaeeaavenned aavevaeasasedauduavenavessdesyudsavevanasasedeedvat 113 Dynamic Rules UP a tes iaiiccseswsascasdadacensnaascdecauresdaiersiaxtean laavensaaaciamnatiwrsedierses acunee 113 Decision API i ssisscssiscscccesscsscscecceciessesseces cvcncceesesesccdeasacccesssssceacesesceasesseced dedecces sesseceacocscctecs 114 Decision gt 00 eee 114 Decision COMSUCUCTONS i icsics
59. cision Table DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Rule Sequence Executed ActionPrint ActionExecute Rule BE Decisions Execute Rules 32 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Table CalculateInternalVariables Single Hit Executed s eget EE aos OOOO Tomom O U BRI 2Co Deve getinCLoen Term s getint Monty Income gtin Loan Term Decision Table DetermineIncomeValidationResult Single Hit Executed po gies BE oome BEER occ Tan eette Der 2 S Decision Table DetermineDebtResearchResult Single Hit Decision Table DetermineLoanQualificationResult Single Hit Executed Condition Condition Conclusion Rule BI toe vaitacon Resets Debt Research Recut RENNER REE These reports help a rule designer to analyze which rules were actually executed and in which order The Executed Rule corresponds to the sequential number of a rule inside its decision table Note Execution reports are intended to explain the behavior of certain decision tables and are used mainly for analysis and not for production If you turn on report generation mode in a multi threaded environment that shares the same instance of OpenRulesEngine the reports will be produced only for the first thread Decision Tracing 33 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules relies on the standard Java logging facilities for the decision output They can be controlled by
60. conditions in the same rule row are ignored and are not evaluated The 54 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual absence of a parameter in a condition cell means the condition is always true Actions are evaluated only if all conditions in the same row are evaluated to be true and the action has non empty parameters Action columns with no parameters are ignored For the default vertical rules tables all rules are executed in top down order There could be situations when all conditions in two or more rules rows are satisfied In that case the actions of all rules rows will be executed and the actions in the rows below can override the actions of the rows above For horizontal rules tables all rules columns are executed in left to right order Relationships between Rules inside Rules Tables By default OpenRules does not assume any implicit magic execution logic and executes rules in the order specified by the rule designer All rules are executed one by one in the order they are placed in the rules table There is a simple rule that governs rules execution inside a rules table The preceding rules are evaluated and executed first OpenRules supports the following types of rules tables that offer different execution logic to satisfy different practical needs Multi hit rules tables Single hit rules tables Rule Sequences Note OpenRules uses a constraint based rule engine to execute decision models i
61. d This is only a business view of the rules table The complete view including the hidden implementation details Java snippets is presented below Rules void defineSalutation Customer customer Response response C1 C2 A1 customer gender customer maritalStatus response map put salutation s equals gender equals status alutation String gender String status String salutation Gender Marital Status Set Salutation Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms The OpenRulesEngine will execute rules all 3 white rows one after another For each row if conditions C1 and C2 are satisfied then the action A1 will be executed with the selected salutation We may add one more rule at the very end of this table Rules defineSalutation Customer customer Response response Gender Marital Status Set Salutation Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms 22 In this case after executing the second rule OpenRules will also execute the new 4th rule and will override a salutation Mrs with Obviously this is not a desirable result However sometimes it may have a positive effect by avoiding undefined values in cases when the previous rules did not cover all possible situations What if our customer is a Divorced Female How can this multi hit effect be avoided What if we want to produce only when no other rules have been satisfied 58
62. d greet People from the XML file People xml People people People load classpath People xml for int i 0 i lt people Person length i People Person person people Person i defineSalutation person app igreet Person System_out_printin app greeting app salutation person_name l 105 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Integration with Relational Databases OpenRules provides a user with ability to access data and rules defined in relational databases There are two aspects of OpenRules and database integration 1 Accessing data located in a database 2 Saving and maintaining rules in a database as Blob objects The detailed description of database integration in provided at http openrules com pdf OpenRulesUserManual DB pdf Rules Version Control For rules version control you can choose any standard version control system that works within your traditional software development environment We would recommend using an open source product Subversion that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community For business users a friendly web interface is provided by a popular open source product TortoiseSVN For technical users it may be preferable to use a Subversion incorporated into Eclipse IDE One obvious advantage of the suggested approach is the fact that both business rules and related Java XML files will be handled by the same version control system
63. dates If a business rule is changed OpenRulesEngine automatically reloads the rule when necessary Before any engine s run OpenRulesEngine checks to determine if the main Excel file associated with this instance of the engine has been changed Actually OpenRulesEngine looks at the latest modification dates of the file xlsMainFileName If it has been modified OpenRulesEngine re initializes itself and reloads all related Excel files You can shut down this feature by executing the following method ngine setCheckRuleUpdates false 113 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision API Decision Example OpenRules provides a special API for decision execution using the Java class Decision The following example from the standard project Decision1040EZ demonstrates the use of this API public class Main public static void main String args String fileName file rules main Decision xls OpenRulesEngine engine new OpenRulesEngine fileName Decision decision new Decision Apply1l040EZ engine DynamicObject taxReturn DynamicObject engine run getTaxReturn engine log INPUT n taxReturn decision put taxReturn taxReturn decision execute engine log OUTPUT n taxReturn Here we first created an instance engine of the class OpenRulesEngine and used it to create an instance decision of the class Decision We u
64. dbsseexecdesscxceed NESEN ENSE n sens 141 Main Configuration Project isccccccsssscecssssscesctsssccccsassesccessssnccsssencctesssscceesssnscesassessseszensses 141 Supporting Librarie S essnee a ea aa E E eA NE E 142 Predefined Types and Temp lates ccssscccssssscececssstececseseeecseseeeeeeesseaecessenaeeeeees 143 Technical SUPOTE seiascistaviasateisaaucusesienatiaranstadesiaeedanedssdisesdsamsanss see erostia eas o 143 50 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual INTRODUCTION OpenRules was developed in 2003 by OpenRules Inc as an open source Business Rules Management System BRMS and since then has become one of the most popular Business Rules products on the market Over these years OpenRules has been naturally transformed in a Business Rules and Decision Management System BRDMS with proven records of delivering and maintaining reliable decision support software OpenRules is a winner of several software awards for innovation and is used worldwide by multi billion dollar corporations major banks insurers health care providers government agencies online stores universities and many other institutions Brief History From the very beginning OpenRules was oriented to subject matter experts business analysts allowing them to work in concert with software developers to create maintain and efficiently execute business logic presented in enterprise class rules repositories OpenRules avoided the introduction of
65. dding Custom Methods to Decision and Decision Runs The file DecisionTemplates xls contains the default methods customInitializeDecision customInitializeDecisionRun that may be replaced by your own methods For example rewriting the method customInitializeDecision allows a user to initialize custom objects These and other methods are described below For a good example of customization look at the file DecisionTableSolveTemplates xls that is used by Rule Solver instead of the file DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls Contact support openrules com if you need help with more complex customization of the decision templates DATA MODELING OpenRules includes an ability to define new data object types and creates the objects of these types directly in Excel It allows business analysts to do Rule Harvesting by defining business terms and facts without worrying about their implementation in Java C or XML It also provides the ability to test the business rules in a pre integrated mode To do standalone rule testing a designer of rules and forms specifies his her own data object types as Excel tables and creates instances of objects of these types passing them to the rules tables We describe how to do it in the sections below There is one more important reason why a business or even a technical specialist may need data modeling abilities without knowing complex software development techniques I
66. dentifiers Java snippets describe condition action semantics Parameter types and names Business names for conditions and actions Rules void defineGreeting App app int hour Cl min lt hour amp amp hour lt max int min int max Hour From Hour To We may use this rules table as a template to define different greeting rules for summer and winter time The actual decision tables will implement or extend the template table with particular rules Rules summerGreeting template defineGreeting 0 10 Good Morning 11 18 Good Afternoon 19 22 Good Evening 23 24 Good Night and 740 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules winterGreeting template defineGreeting He ve Hour To 0 11 Good Morning 12 17 Good Afternoon 18 22 Good Evening 23 24 Good Night Note that rules tables summerGreeting and winterGreeting do not have technical information at all Java snippets and a signature are defined only once and reside in the template table defineGreeting Along with the keyword template you may use other keywords e implements e implement e extends e extend We will refer to these rules tables created based on a template as template implementations Simple templates require that the extended tables should have exactly the same condition and action columns Defining Rules based on Templates When many
67. e For strings only e g House Does Not does not contain user The i DoesNotContain Contain comparison is not case sensitive For strings only e g House Starts Siart with Start starts with ho The With comparison is not case sensitive Watches Ts Like Like Compares if the string matches a regular expression N NotMatch Does Not Match Not Like Compares if a string does not Match Is Not Like Different Different From match a regular expression 170 gt lt lt Is S OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual For integers and real numbers The interval can be defined as Within Inside Inside Interval Interval 0 9 1 20 5 10 between 5 and 10 more than 5 and less or equals 10 see more Opposite to Within checks Outside Interval if an integer or real value is outside of the provided interval For integer and real numbers and for strings Checks if a Is One Of be One te One ot Many 1s Among value is among elements of the Among i domain of values listed through comma For integer and real numbers and for strings Checks if a Is Not l One Of Is not among Not among value is NOT among elements of the domain of values listed through comma To compare two arrays Returns true when the first array decision variable Inciude Include AN include all elements of the second array value within decision table cell Do Not Include Exclude One Of compare
68. e engine using the methods setAttachment Object attachment Different threads will receive this instance of the rule engine as a parameter and will safely run various rules in parallel using the same engine The complete OpenRules installation includes examples HelloFromThreads and DecisionHelloMultiThreaded that demonstrate how to organize a parallel execution of the same OpenRulesEngine s instance in different threads and how to measure their performance 1270 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DEPLOYMENT OpenRules based applications can be deployed using the following approaches e As components of Java Applications e As Web Services e As presentation oriented Web Applications e On Cloud OpenRules can be easily embedded in a Java application At the same time it allows you to develop Web applications with complex rules based logic without forcing you to become an expert in various Web development techniques Using the commonly known Excel interface you can define your business logicin the form of Excel based business rules and make them available as fine grained Web services You also may define your presentation logic using Excel based web forms with associated interaction rules Being deployed as a presentation oriented Web application it will invoke the related rule services whenever necessary Frequently such a service oriented approach to web application development also involves a workflow engine
69. e is very useful when your application wants to show the good results of the decision execution but also need to show the errors in the user defined decision model JSR 94 Implementation 126 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules provides a reference implementation of the JSR94 standard known as Java Rule Engine API see http www jcp org en jsr detail id 94 The complete OpenRules installation includes the following projects JSR 94 Project Description lib jsrg This project contains the standard jsr94 1 0 library This is an OpenRules s reference implementation for the JSR94 standard com openrules jsr94 and includes the source code It uses OpenRulesEngine to implement RuleExecutionSet This is an example of using JSR94 for HelloJsr94 simple rules that generate customized greetings HelloJspJsr94 is similar to HelloJsp but uses the OpenRules JSR 94 Interface to create and run OpenRulesEngine for a web application HelloJspJsr94 Multi Threading OpenRulesEngine is thread safe and works very efficiently in multi threaded environments supporting real parallelism OpenRulesEngine is stateless which allows a user to create only one instance of the class OpenRulesEngine and then share this instance between different threads There are no needs to create a pool of rule engines A user may also initialize the engine with application data common for all threads and attach this data directly to th
70. eCreditScore loanHolder creditCardBalance educationLoanBalance internalCreditRating internalAnalystOpinion Now whenever we need to reference the first customer we can refer to him as customers 0 Similarly if you want to define a doubled monthly income for the second custromer Mary K Brown you may simply write customers 1 monthlyIncome 2 You can find many additional details about data modeling in this section Connecting the Decisions with Business Objects To tell OpenRules that we want to associate the object customers 0 with our business concept Customer defined in the Glossary we need to use a special table DecisionObject that may look as follows DecisionObject decisionObjects Customer customers 0 loanRequests 0 Internal intemal o Here we also associate other business concepts namely Request and Internal with the proper business objects see how they are defined in the standard example DecisionLoan 260 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The above table connects a decision with test data defined by business users directly in Excel This allows the decision to be tested However after the decision is tested it will be integrated into a real application that may use objects defined in Java in XML or in a database etc For example if there are instances of Java classes Customer and LoanRequest they may be put in the object decision t
71. ececeeseneeeeessseeeessseneeens 19 Expression inside Decision Tables ccccssscccccccssssssssecececeesceesenseseeeeeeseessessaeeeeeesens 20 Using Regular Expressions in Decision Table Conditions cssccccesesseeeseenteeeeeees 23 Defining Business Glossary i sscevcccececsessilecascdntessdsstteesssceteosecdivecwcsdetoodssssvecsssveueesecdabeossseeteess 23 Defining Test Data iiiscicsscssciccssssscccsssvecccessvccesssiscccsiessccctedeveceuessvececsdssccevsdss NESSI KASTE 25 Connecting the Decisions with Business Objects sssscssssssecsssssccccssssceccecssssccesssseceeees 26 Decision EX cutions ssccccssscscccsssececcessscotssssscntsassscctssssesndsessesctcsssesstsasssssscacsesncsactsssssssszssdoaszs 27 DOCISION Amal YSIS ossessione ESENES IESSE EENES ESE EEEN 28 Decision Syntax VATION oscnisacnscresinlscctcsnapiceedstoaus tine edendsinac ankes EN Ea Eoin aaea 28 DECISION Testing acosonomerinses onini n E A T AEG 29 Decision EXECUTION REPOTt Sisinnius ania aaa i 31 DECISION Tracing cieiisssstaredsi aiiivsiatarinti alee E E G 33 Rules Repository Seaf hs s iursinnreisisnnitesiiinuieorts innis nnna neniani anners 34 Consistency Checking 2sc daxiiateaduddaccsandtase dierdtielaavdudenpebedansoleasinaddeddunteuvadtandudedeaygutaeluady 35 Advanced DECISION Tables sss isiisissriscssisritsrereriesirirsrviaiivsinssoiisreriinesiriivieiniiiiervieiisioiiia 36 Specialized Conditions and Conclusions ssssseesssosssessesssoosssesssesso
72. eck the file DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls in your standard configuration project openrules config to see the latest version of the decision table templates Template Customization Customizing Default Decision Tables A user may move the above files from openrules config to different locations and modify the decision table templates and possible other templates For example to have different types of messaging inside a custom decision a user may add two more columns to the template DecisionTableTemplate Warning similar to Message but can use a different log for warning only Errors similar to Message but can use a different log for errors only Adding Custom Decision Tables Users may add their own decision tables with conditions and actions specific to their applications by defining their own keywords by simply extending the keyword DecisionTable with they own identifier For example a user may add a new decision table type called DecisionTableMy by defining the proper custom conditions and actions inside a template with the name DecisionTableMyTemplate The standard installation includes a_ project DecisionCustom that demonstrates a custom decision table called DecisionTableCustom created based on a project specific template DecisionTableCustomTemplate This template is placed in the project file DecisionTableCustomTemplates xls 83 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual A
73. ecscecesssecasssaceeessssseacss saves 126 MUultipThreading ss iisscccccss sees ccssssieccssssectiesseteccesssesdcecszteccssssesd eesseecceessesccesszeedceaseesd esszentcss 127 DO DIOUINGIN sissssiiictssiviesrrsdintieasincdseaetensiianiwetsneaunielbsaaudavuarumulsbasusaiunadadeianeusdauteisedubants 128 Embedding OpenRules in Java Applications csccssssssccsssssscccsscsccesssssccenssssceeesseseeaees 128 Deploying Rules as Web Services cccicssseccscssssecdcesseenscssssesdceessenscoassendcesssondceassecdcaeszentces 129 Deploying Rules and Forms as Web Applications scccssssssccssssscceesssscensssseceensseseeeees 129 Generating Java Interfaces from Excel based Decision Models sssssssssccssssccsseessseees 130 GeNSFating Java ClaSS2S iecceudcesieccsaaeesdeseubaneainreceudued saariin Ei En iiaia 130 Using Generated Business Maps as a Decision Model Interface cceeesseeeeee 134 Accessing Excel Data from Java Dynamic Objects sssscccsssssceccssssssccsssscsecessseseeeeees 138 External RUES sesccscssceucessccescceevecdesdcccesd cosevseesssscasasduaesdvaeteceverdecevevesdevacdevsdeedeceeoasvee s 140 OpenRules PHOJCCTS vivcccccsstcccssecctetecccescooersccevaheutiaceuerscedstscesectevsescuostntaetseesssecoseseceers 141 Pre R QUISILOS isicicstsscisccccecdccedsscsccssssicccsdsscccdedsecdecedssscacssssicccedssccedesseccecedssscccssasicceedssecstes 141 Sample Projects weiss scciisscseccdissceseds cacvedeessene
74. eet with two rules tables 48 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual fd Microsoft Excel HelloCustomer xls S Eile Edit view Insert Format Tools Data window Help i nectar Deneska n err RAG i o gt TE a a Rules void defineGreeting int hour Respo Good Morning Good Afternoon Hour From Oo o ee ee 7 Good Evening Oo o oa aA ee Good Night The worksheet Decision Tables is comprised of two rules tables defineGreeting and defineSalutation These tables start with signature rows that are determined by a keyword Rules in the first cell of the table A table signature in general has the following format Rules return type table name typel parl type2 par2 where table name is a one word function name and return type typel and type 2 are types defined in your OpenRules configuration For example type may be any basic Java type such as int double Date String or your own type Customer All of the columns have been merged into a single cell in the signature rows Merging cells B3 C3 and D3 specifies that table defineGreeting has 3 columns A table includes all those rows under its signature that contain non empty cells in the example above an empty row 12 indicates the end of the table defineGreeting Limitation Avoid merging rule rows in the very first column or in the very first row for horizontal tables it may lead to invalid logic 49 OpenRules
75. es 48 Business and Technical Views siicccccssssscccssssecconssssceoedsssccovassecccvaceeccovaseacsonassscoceasstessoassacsoeas 50 How Rules Tables Are Organized ici csccccssisccssssssccscsssssossesssccacssssecasasssscccacstecscaasssosssasssndeasis 51 How Rules Tables Are Executed iiiccecsetscccccdcccvcoseceetecseeces oc Stcasecddvicvecussestessecseecesveysuedsesseveces 54 Relationships between Rules inside Rules Tables cccssscecsssseeecessseeeeeseseeeeeees 55 Multi Hit Rules Tables 0 ccccccccccccecesssssesesececeesssesseaeeeseeeesceesesaeaeeeeeeeseesesssaeeeseeeens 55 Rules Overrides in Multi Hit Rules Tables ccccessscccececscessesseseeeeeeeesssessaeeeseeeens 57 Single Hit Rules Table Sranie a aa a a a cavetdeets 59 Pulls SCQUENICES sirsiran torian aaa EETA E aan a eae 60 Relationships among Rules Tables cccccccccccecsssessssececeeeescesseseeaeseceeesessessaeeeeeeeens 61 Simple AND OR Conditions in Rules Tables sesssesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesesssesesssens 61 Horizontal and Vertical Rules Tables sssssccsssssceccssssseccessseeccacssssccecssssccecsssseeansseseeeess 62 Merging Cells sssssicsssrssusssrrssirssssssrnssidsstsss tr ssisss sst ss dt sUNSSEVNSNASSESERESSE PEVESS SSASSN NS RESSAR KESSA 63 Sub Columns and Sub Rows for Dynamic ArrayS scccsssssececsssssceccesssceccesssceesesssesseesseeees 64 Using Expressions inside Rules Tables ssscccsss
76. es tools see com openrules tools Operator java You may change them or add other operators In addition to values of the type int you may also use Operator to compare long double and String types 68 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Comparing Dates You may use the standard java util Date or any other Java Comparable type Here is an example of comparing Dates Operator Date 2 15 2007 l 1 1 2007 lt 2 15 2007 gt 2 15 2007 lt 2 15 2007 Please note that the current implementation compares dates without time Another way to use operators directly inside a table is to use expressions In the example above instead of having two sub columns Operator and Value we could use one column and put an expression inside the cell c creditCardBalance lt 0 The use of expressions is very convenient when you do not know ahead of time which operator will be required for which columns Comparing Boolean Values If a parameter type is defined as boolean you are allowed to use the following values inside rule cells True TRUE Yes YES False FALSE No NO You also may use formulas that produce a Boolean e g loan additionalIncomeValidationNeeded 69 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Sometimes you want to indicate that a condition is satisfied or an action should be executed You may use any character like X or without checking
77. example the first column in the second decision table CheckGreeting is defined as ConditionVarOperValue that according to the standard template has 3 sub columns The title of this column is defined as lt Var gt lt Oper gt lt Value gt Note that this title is merged while the content of the proper 3 sub columns is defined using 3 strings such as Result Is Not Good Afternoon in the unmerged format 124 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Finally this decision book is saved to the file rules include Rules xls using the method decisionBook saveToFile rules include Rules xls Formal DecisionBook API The Java class DecisionBook has a public constructor without parameters and the following public method public void addDecisionTable String tableName table name String templateName template name String labels template column labels String descriptions descriptions or variables String rules rules 3 This method adds a new decision table to the rule book The first parameter is the name of the generated decision table no spaces allowed The second parameter is the name of the standard OpenRules template that has one of the following values e DecisionTableTemplate for regular single hit decision tables e DecisionTableiTemplate for multi hit decision tables e DecisionTable2Template for rule sequences see more The third parameter i
78. f decision parameters are changed between different decision runs you may use the following variation of the method execute decision execute true The actual execution of this decision involves engine runs for the following Excel methods in this order engine run decisionObjects this engine run initializeDecision this engine run initializeDecisionRun this engine run this run the main decision engine run finalizeDecision this 11460 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual All these methods are described in the standard file DecisionTemplates xls The method initializeDecision is executed only during the first decision run It calls the method customInitializeDecision that may include an application specific decision initialization The method initializeDecisionRun is executed during every decision run It calls the method customInitializeDecisionRun that may include a code that is specific for every decision run e g it may analyze the parameters of this run and redefine some decision variables The method finalizeDecision is executed after the main Excel table of the type Decision that was specified in the decision s constructor Decision Tests You may test your decision against multiple test cases defined in Excel table of the type DecisionTableTest see above For example if your test cases are define in the table called te
79. g Something PS ting Fonts and coloring schema are a matter of the table designer s taste The designer has at his her disposal the entire presentation power of Excel including comments to make the OpenRules tables more self explanatory We recommend you to follow the coloring and placement recommendations provided by the OMG DMN standard RULES TABLES OpenRules supports different ways to represent business rules inside Excel tables The default decision tables described above are the most popular way to present sets of related business rules and they do not require any coding However there could be other types of decision tables that you may want to create represent more complex execution logic that is frequently custom for different conditions and actions Actually any standard Decision Table is a special case of an OpenRules rules table that is based on a predefined template see below OpenRules allows its users to configure different types of custom decision tables directly in Excel These rules tables have been successfully used by major corporations in real world decision support applications in spite of the necessity to use Java snippets to specify custom logic This chapter describes different decision tables that go beyond the default decision tables It will also describe how to use simple IF THEN ELSE statements within Excel based tables of type Method Rules Table Example Here is an example of a worksh
80. g from rules representation allowing business analysts themselves to specify their decisions and supporting decision tables directly and completely in Excel OpenRules Decision Modeling approach is based on a set of the decisioning templates that represent the latest standardization efforts and 60 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual organized in easily customized Excel tables Along with various decision tables business users can also create business glossaries and test cases as Excel tables They may then test the accuracy and execute their decision models without the need for coding at all Since introduction of OMG Decision Model and Notation DMN in 2013 OpenRules provides it s the most complete support of the standard demonstrating on many practical DMN examples Once a decision has been tested it can be easily incorporated into any Java or NET environment This process may involve IT specialists but only to integrate the business glossary with a specific business object model The business logic remains the complete prerogative of subject matter experts OpenRules Components OpenRules offers the following decision management components e Rule Repository for management of enterprise level decision rules e Rule Engine for execution of decisions and different business rules e Rule Dialog for building rules based Web questionnaires e Rule Learner for rules discovery and predictive analytics e Rule Solver for s
81. glossary provides a few intuitive examples of such domains These domains can be used during the validation of a decision 240 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Defining Test Data OpenRules provides a convenient way to define test data for decisions directly in Excel without the necessity of writing any Java code A non technical user can define all business concepts in the Glossary table using Datatype tables For example here is a Datatype table for the business concept Customer defined above Datatype Customer int monthlyincome int monthlyDebt String mortgageHolder int sf utsideCreditScore Sting floanHolder int Ss CreditCardBalance int educattionLoanBalance String internalCreditRating String internalAnalystOpinion The first column defines the type of the attribute using standard Java types such as int double Boolean String or Date The second column contains the same attribute names that were defined in the Glossary To create an array of objects of the type Customer we may use a special Data table like the one below This table is too wide and difficult to read so we could actually transpose it to a more convenient but equivalent format 250 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Customer customers Peter N Robert 157 82 5344 056 45 8233 241 56 9082 monthlylincome monthlyDebt mortgageHolder outsid
82. hat is used to execute the decision In this case the proper table decisionObjects may look like DecisionObject decisionObjects decision get customer decision get loanRequest Internal o It is important that Decision does not know about a particular object implementation the only requirement is that the attribute inside these objects should have the same names as in the glossary Decision Execution OpenRules provides a template for Java launchers that may be used to execute different decisions There are OpenRules API classes OpenRulesEngine and Decision Here is an example of a decision launcher for the sample project DecisionLoan import com openrules ruleengine Decision public class Main public static void main String args String fileName file rules main Decision xls Decision decision new Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults fileName decision execute Actually it just creates an instance of the class Decision It has only two parameters 1 a path to the main Excel file Decision xls 2 aname of the main Decision inside this Excel file 270 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual When you execute this Java launcher using the provided batch file run bat or execute it from your Eclipse IDE it will produce output that may look like the following xxx Decision DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Decision has been initi
83. he information after the keyword usually contains a unique table name and additional information that depends on the table type If you want to put a table title before the signature row use an empty row between the title and the first row of the actual table Do not forget to put an 46 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual empty row after the last table row Here are examples of some typical tables recognized by OpenRules OpenRules table with 3 columns and 2 rows Keyword lt some text gt OpenRules table with 3 columns and still 2 rows Keyword Something Something OpenRules table with 3 columns and 3 rows empty initial cells are acceptable Keyword lt some text gt F Something Something Something Something Pf Someting OpenRules table with 3 columns and 2 rows the empty 3rd row ends the table Keyword lt some text gt OpenRules table with 2 columns and 2 rows the empty cell in the 3rd column of the title row results in the 4th columns being ignored This also points out the importance of merging cells in the title row Keyword Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something Something OpenRules will not recognize this table there is no empty row before the signature row 47 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Table Title Keyword lt some text gt Something Something Somethin
84. info BusinessMap map getBusinessConcept map getNamedTypes if Patient equals map getBusinessConcept map setAttribute name Peter N Johnson map setAttribute age 58 map setAttribute allergies Penicillin Streptomycin map setAttribute creatinineLevel 2 0 map setAttribute creatinineClearance 44 42 map setAttribute weight 78 map setAttribute activeMedication Coumadin map setAttribute numbers 100 200 300 else if DoctorVisit equals map getBusinessConcept map setAttribute date 2 15 2011 map setAttribute encounterDiagnosis Acute Sinusitis map setAttribute recommendedMedication map setAttribute recommendedDose t Log info map Object output decision executeWithBusinessMaps Log info output for BusinessMap map maps Log info map The decision will be executed using the business maps as parameters and will fill out unknown attributes recommendedMedication and recommendedDose in the map DoctorVisit Accessing Excel Data from Java Dynamic Objects You can access objects created in Excel data tables from your Java program These objects have a predefined type DynamicObject Let s assume that you defined your own Datatype Customer and created an array of customers in Excel 138 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Customer c
85. inside gray technical rows and a business person would only be able to choose between Yes or No However the same table could be presented in this way Rules void ValidatelncomeRules LoanRequest loan Customer customer C1 Al BORA E E loan incomeValidationResult result boolean condition String result IF Condition is True UNSUFFICIENT customer monthlylncome 0 8 customer monthlyDebt gt loan amount loan term SUFFICIENT 720 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Now a user can both see and change the actual income validation condition Notes e Do not use Excel s formulas if you want the content to be recognized by the OpenRules engine use OpenRules expressions instead e If you want to start your cell with you have to put an apostrophe in front of it 1 e to direct Excel not to attempt to interpret it as a formula Expanding and Customizing Predefined Types All the predefined types mentioned above are implemented in the Java package com openrules types You may get the source code of this package and expand and or customize the proper classes In particular for internationalization purposes you may translate the English key words into your preferred language You may change the default assumptions about inclusion exclusion of bounds inside integer and real intervals You may add new types of intervals and domains Performance Considerations
86. ions from the templates If the majority of the template implementations do not use a certain condition from the template then this condition may be explicitly marked as optional by putting the condition name in brackets e g C3 or Conditon 5 In this case it 1s not necessary to use the second row to specify the selected conditions in the majority of the extended tables For example let s modify the DebtResearchRules template making the conditions C8 C4 and C7 optional Rules void DebtResearchRules C1 c2 c3 rca cs ce 107 IFAI LoanRequest loan Customer c Now we can implement this template as the following rules table without the necessity to name all of the conditions and actions in the second row Rules MyDebtResearchRules template DebtResearchRules AND AND Outside Education Loan AND Mortgag Credit Score Balance Internal Credit Rating Min Max Oper Value No 100 550 79 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual However a template implementation that does want to use optional conditions will have to specify them explicitly using the second row Rules MyDebtResearchRules template DebtResearchRules AND AND Credit Card Balance Similarly optional actions may be marked as A1 or Action3 Implementation Notes o Rule templates are supported for both vertical and horiz
87. ions to define different intervals for integer and real decision variables inside rules tables Instead of creating multiple columns for defining different ranges for integer and real values a business user may define from to intervals in practically unlimited English using such phrases as 500 1000 between 500 and 1000 Less than 16 More or equals to 17 17 and older lt 50 gt 10 000 70 from 9 to 17 12314 ete You also may use many other ways to represent an interval of integers by specifying their two bounds or sometimes only one bound Here are some examples of valid integer intervals 5 10 contains 5 6 7 8 9 and 10 65 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 5 20 error left bound is greater than the right one DN Aon than 5 contains 5 but not 10 ou ice less or does not contain 5 and contains 10 more Mian Dll At does not contain 5 111 111 and contains and less or equal than 10 222 222 10 222 222 5 000 10 000 000 contains 5 000 but not 10 000 000 5 000 10 000 000 contains 5 000 but not 10 000 000 5 100 000 000 contains 5 000 and 10 000 000 66 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual You may use many other ways to represent integer intervals as you usually do in plain English The only limitation is the following minshould always go before max Similarly to integer intervals one may use the predefined type FromToDouble to represent intervals of real
88. is point increase Money Market Mutual Fund and Credit Card THEN Offered Products ARE CD with 25 basis point increase Money Market Mutual Fund and Credit Card Decision Table Operators 16 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules supports multiple ways to define operators within decision table conditions and conclusions When you use a text form of operators you can freely use upper and lower cases and spaces The following operators can be used inside decision table conditions When you use or y inside Excel write op with apostrophe to avoid confusion with Excel s own formulas Is More More Is More Than Is For integers and real numbers Greater Greater Is Greater Than and Dates Is More Or Equal Is More Or Equal For integers and real numbers To Is More Than Or Equal To Is and Dates Greater Or Equal To Is Greater Than Or Equal To Is Less Or Equal Is Less Than Or For integers and real numbers Equal To Is Less Than Or Equal To Is and Dates Smaller Or Equal To Is Smaller Than Or Equal To Is Smaller Than Or Equal To Is Less Less Is Less Than Is Smaller For integers and real numbers Smaller Is Smaller Than and Dates pO Ped A string is considered empty Is Empty if it is either null or contains only zero or more whitespaces For strings only e g House 66 Contains Contain es Mhig comparison is not case sensitiv
89. isionLoanWithBusinessMaps The first project includes the following Java class public class GenerateDecisionInterface public static void main String args String fileName file rules DecisionPatientTherapy xls Decision decision new Decision DeterminePatientTherapy fileName String packageName healthcare String path src healthcare decision generateDecisionObjects packageName path It generates two interface Java classes Patient and DoctorVisit Then you may use the following Java launcher to create a decision fill out decision maps execute the decision and print the resulting maps In this example a user do not even have to know about the existence of the intermediate Java classes Instead it may call the Decision s method public List lt BusinessMap gt createBusinessMaps String packageName that returns a list of all business maps from the package inside which the previous GenerateDecisionInterface call placed all generated files You can find the entire code in the file MainBusinessMaps java 1370 OpenRules Inc public class MainBusinessMaps OpenRules User Manual public static void main String args String fileName file rules DecisionPatientTherapy xls Decision decision new Decision DeterminePatientTherapy fileName String packageName healthcare List lt BusinessMap gt maps decision createBusinessMaps packageName for BusinessMap map maps Log
90. it directly in the engine run 1100 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual engine run methodName businessObjects If you want to pass to OpenRulesEngine only one object such as customer you may write something like this engine run helloCustomer customer If you do not want to pass any object to OpenRulesEngine but expect to receive some results from the engine s run you may use this version of the method m Ws run String reasons String engine run getReasons Undefined Methods OpenRulesEngine checks to validate if all Excel based tables and methods are actually defined It produces a syntax error if a method is missing Sometimes you want to execute a rule method table from an Excel file but only if this method is actually present To do this you may use this version of the method ne run boolean mayNotDefined true engine run methodName businessObjects mayNotDefined In this case if the method methodName is not defined the engine would not throw a usual runtime exception The method lt name gt is not defined but rather will produce a warning and will continue to work The parameter mayNotDefined may be used similarly with the method run with one parameter or with no parameters e g engine run validateCustomer customer true How to invoke rules from other rules if you do not know if these rules are defined It may be especially important when you
91. ituations when all conditions in two or more rules rows are satisfied at the same time multiple hits In that case the actions of all rules rows will be executed but the actions in the rows below can override the actions of the rows above This approach also allows a designer to specify a very natural requirement More specific rules should override more generic rules The only thing a designer needs to guarantee is that more specific rules are placed in the same rules table after more generic rules For example you may want to execute Action 1 every time that Condition 1 and Condition 2 are satisfied However if additionally Condition 3 is also satisfied you want to execute Action 2 To do this you could arrange your rules table in the following way Condition 1 Condition 2 Condition 3 Action 1 Action 2 In this table the second rule may override the first one as you might naturally expect Let s consider the execution logic of the following multi hit rules table that defines a salutation Mr Mrs or Ms based on a customer s gender and marital status Rules void defineSalutation Customer customer Response response Gender Marital Status Set Salut Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms 570 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual If a customer is a married female the conditions of the second rules are satisfied and the salutation Mrs will be selecte
92. ks and rules tables Included Workbooks Rules workbooks refer to other workbooks using so called includes inside the OpenRules Environment tables To let OpenRules know about such include relationships you have to place references to all included xls files into the table Environment Here is an example of an OpenRules repository that comes with the standard sample project RuleRepository a re rules The main xls file Main xls is located in the local directory El CategoryA rules main To invoke any rules associated with this file Pa SubCategoryA1 the proper Java program creates an OpenRulesEngine using pnan fa a string file rules main Main xls as a parameter i rane There are many other xls files related to the Main xls and fee RulesA1 xls as 4 i 3 located in different subdirectories of rules Here is a RulesA2 xls s f amp e CategoryB fragment of the Main xls Environment table RulesB 1 xIs _ Cate go A RulesA1 xls E B RulesB2 xls CategoryA RulesA2 xls E Common _ Cate JO B RulesB1 xls ibA CategoryB RulesB2_xis RG libRulesX xis _ Common libA libRulesX xls i libRulesY xls Common libA libRulesY_ xls ae main 98 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual As you can guess in this instance all included files are defined relative to the directory rules main in which Main xls resides You may notice that files RulesA11 xls and RulesA12 xls are not incl
93. lculate ee 120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Since this table Decision Apply1040EZ uses an optional column Condition we have to add a second row The keywords Condition ActionPrint and ActionExecute are defined in the standard OpenRules template DecisionTemplate see the configuration file DecisionTemplates xls in the folder openrules config This table uses a decision variable 1040EZ Eligible that is defined by the first unconditional sub decision Validate We assume that the decision ValidateTaxReturn should set this decision variable to TRUE or FALSE Then the second sub decision Calculate will be executed only when 1040EZ Eligible is TRUE When it is FALSE this decision Apply1040EZ will simply print Do Not Calculate In our example the reason will be printed by the decision table ValidateTaxReturn Note You may use many conditions of the type Condition defined on different decision variables Similarly you may use an optional condition ConditionAny which instead of decision variables can use any formulas defined on any known objects It is also possible to add custom actions using an optional action ActionAny see DecisionTemplates xls in the folder openrules config When you have completed defining all decision and sub decisions you may define your decision logic in various decisi
94. ld correspond to a known datatype it can be an already defined Excel Datatype table or a known Java class or an XML file The tableName is any one word valid identifier of the table a combination of letters and numbers The second row can consists of cells that correspond to attribute names in the data type datatypeName It is not necessary to define all attributes but at least one should be defined The order of the columns is not important The third row contains the display name of each attribute you may use unlimited natural language All following rows contain data values with types that correspond to the types of the column attributes Here is an example of the Data table for the datatype PersonalInfo defined in the previous section with added SSN Data Personallnfo personallnformation a psms foneme nem meee ene poo ferme penema feer fo e e C T The table name is personalInformation and it defines an array of objects of the type PersonalInfo The array shown consists only of two elements personalInformation 0 for John and personalInformation 1 for Mary You may add as many data rows as necessary 910 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The attributes after the SSN attribute have not been defined Please note that the references to the aggregated data types are defined in a natural way ssn ssnl ssn ssn2 ssn ssn3 using the dot convention As you c
95. le 1 DecisionTable Variable 1 Define Variable 2 DecisionTable Variable 1 110 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Define Variable 2 DecisionTableVariable22 Define Variable 3 DecisionVariable3 Define Variable 4 DecisionTableVariable4 In order to Define Variable 2 it is necessary to execute two decision tables Some decisions like Define Variable 3 may require their own separate sub decisions such as described in the following table Decision DecisionVariable3 Define Variable 3 1 DecisionTableVariable3 1 Define Variable 3 2 DecisionTableVariable32 Define Variable 3 3 DecisionTableVariable33 These tables can be kept in different files and can be considered as building blocks for your decisions This top down approach with Decision Tables and dependencies between them allows you to represent quite complex decision logic in an intuitive easy to understand way Some decisions may have a more complex structure than the just described sequence of sub decisions You can even use conditions inside decision tables For example consider a situation when the first sub decision validates your data and a second sub decision executes complex calculations but only if the preceding validation was successful Here is an example of such a decision from the tax calculation tutorial Decision Apply1040EZ Condition _ ActionPrint ActionExecute Te cite rein FALSE Do Not Ca
96. les Glossary specifies names of business concepts that contain decision variables The connection mapping between business concepts and actual objects that implement these concepts decision objects is usually specified in the Excel table decisionObjects that may look like DecisionObject decisionObjects Customer decision get customer Customer decision get loanRequest Internal itera o O The standard mapping is implemented in the DecisionObjectTemplate using the following Glossary s method void useBusinessObject String businessConcept Object object 1190 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual What if you want to change actual business objects on the fly during the decision execution You can do it by using the same method inside your Excel rules For example you may want to apply the following decision table EvaluateAssets for all elements of an array assets of a given customer DecisionTable EvaluateAsset Condition Condition Conclusion Customer s Assets Asset Name Asset Status Status Is One A en Of sset12 Asset21 Asset23 Is Active Is Sufficient In this case you still may specify the business concept Asset in your glossary only once but you may associate different elements of an array assets with the concept Asset multiple times in the loop similar to the one below Method void evaluateCustomerAssets Decision decisi
97. like in the following example DecisionTable Swap If you look at the implementation of the column Message in the file DecisionTableExecuteTemplates x s you will see the following Java snippet String out decision macro message decision log out from TABLE_TITLE Here the Decision s method macro replaces RULE_ID with the actual ID of this rule within message You may similarly use this method inside your own custom templates e g to save rule tracing information in your own desired way SPREADSHEET ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OpenRules uses Excel spreadsheets to represent and maintain business rules web forms and other information that can be organized using a tabular format Excel is the best tool to handle different tables and is a popular and widely used tool among business analysts Workbooks Worksheets and Tables OpenRules utilizes commonly used concepts of workbooks and worksheets These can be represented and maintained in multiple Excel files Each OpenRules workbook is comprised of one or more worksheets that can be used to separate information by categories Each worksheet in turn is comprised of one or more tables Decision tables are the most typical OpenRules tables and 45 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual are used to represent business rules Workbooks can include tables of different types each of which can support a different underlying logic How Open
98. lly for every Java class bean they manually define only attributes with their types and then use Java IDE such as Eclipse to generate all accessors and modifiers See for example how it was done in the basic project DecisionHelloJava This section describes how to automatically generate Java interfaces for already tested decision models We will demonstrate how to generate Java interfaces using the sample project DecisionWithGeneratedJava A more complex example is presented in the project DecisionPatientTherapyWithBusinessMaps that is also included in the standard installation Generating Java Classes Before generating a Java interface you need to have a working decision models tested on a set of Data tables For example DecisionWithGeneratedJava is very 130 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual similar to DecisionHelloJava and includes the same greeting and salutation rules The test cases are based on the following Datatypes tables placed in the file Datatype xls Datatype Customer Datatype Response String salutation Data Customer cust Robinson Married Female 4 1 2001 20 Smith Single Mae 10719 1980 1 This decision model was tested using RunTest java that looks as follows public class RunTest public static void main String args String fileName file rules main DecisionTest xls Decision decision new Decision DetermineCustomerGreeting
99. lly start with the letter A for example A1 Action 1 Row Code see row 5 in the table above The cells in this row specify the semantics of the condition or action associated with the corresponding columns For example the cell B5 contains the code min lt hour This means that condition C1 will be true whenever the value for min in any cell in the column below in this row is less than or equals to the parameter hour If Houris 15 then the Cl conditions from rows 8 and 9 will be satisfied The code in the Action columns defines what should be done when all conditions are satisfied For example cell D5 contains the code response map put greeting greeting This code will put a string parameter greeting chosen from a row where all of the conditions are satisfied into the map associated with the object response Row Parameters see row 6 in the table above The cells in this row specify the types and names of the parameters used in the previous row Row Display Values see row 7 in the table above The cells in this row contain a natural language description of the column content Note The standard decisions and decision tables do not use technical views at all as they rely on predefined templates How Rules Tables Are Organized As you have seen in the previous section rules tables have the following structure Row 1 Signature Rules lt JavaClass gt tableName Typel parl Type2 par2
100. location and simply modify this reference making it relative to your main xls file TECHNICAL SUPPORT Direct all your technical questions to support openrules com or to this Discussion Group Read more at http openrules com services htm 143
101. ment OpenRules provides an Eclipse Plug in that allows them to treat business rules as a natural part of complex Java projects OPENRULES API OpenRules provides a Java API Application Programming Interface that defines a set of commonly used functions Creating a rule engine associated with a set of Excel based rules Creating a decision associated with a set of Excel based rules Executing different rule sets using application specific business objects Creating a web session and controlling client server interaction JavaDoc The detailed API for the major Java classes OpenRulesEngine and Decision is available from http openrules com javadoc Below we will describe the most popular methods OpenRulesEngine API OpenRulesEngine is a Java class provide by OpenRule to execute different rule sets and methods specified in Excel files using application specific business objects OpenRulesEngine can be invoked from any Java application using a simple Java API or a standard JSR 94 interface Being deployed as a web service OpenRules based project can be invoked from any NET application read more here Engine Constructors OpenRulesEngine provides an interface to execute rules and methods defined in Excel tables You can see examples of how OpenRulesEngine is used in basic rule 108 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual projects such as HelloJava DecisionHelloJava HelloJsr94 and web applications such
102. n the inferential mode when an order of rules inside decision tables and between tables is not important Multi Hit Rules Tables A multi hit rules table evaluates conditions in ALL rows before any action is executed Thus actions are executed only AFTER all conditions for all rules have already been evaluated From this point of view the execution logic is 550 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual different from traditional programming if then logic Let us consider a simple example We want to write a program swap that will do the following If x is equal to 1 then make x to be equal to 2 If x is equal to 2 then make x to be equal to 1 Suppose you decided to write a Java method assuming that there is a class App with an integer variable x The code may but should not look like this void swapX App app if ll N e app x 1 app x if app x 2 app x 1 Obviously this method will produce an incorrect result because of the missing else This is obvious to a software developer but may not be at all obvious to a business analyst However in a properly formatted rules table the following representation would be a completely legitimate It will also match our plain English description above Here is the same table with an extended technical view 56 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules Overrides in Multi Hit Rules Tables There could be s
103. n variable and can be calculated using formulas For example a condition can be defined based on combination of several decision variables and you would not want to artificially add an intermediate decision variable to your glossary in order to accommodate each needed combination of existing decision variables In such a case you may use special columns ConditionAny and ConclusionAny The titles of these columns do not represent any decision variable and may contain any text You may use any formulas inside the cells of these columns that execute some custom actions Multi Hit Decision Tables By default the DecisionTable are single hit meaning that after the execution of the first satisfied rule the table ends its work You even can use a keyword DecisionTableSingleHit along with DecisionTable However sometimes this behavior is not sufficient 36 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules provide two additional types of decision tables e DecisionTable1 or DecisionTableMultiHit or DT1 e DecisionTable2 or DecisionTableSequence or DT2 DecisionTableMultiHit Contrary to the standard single hit DecisionTable decision tables of type DecisionTablel or DecisionTableMultiHit are implemented as multi hit decision tables DecisionTable1 supports the following rules execution logic 1 All rules are evaluated and if their conditions are satisfied they will be marked as to be executed
104. n Tables lt Servers l Rule Templates i Date Modeling SEN Rule Tests Methods i Version Control h fhejeiig Repositories Subversion CVS External Rules vs sout ccr f sae Logically OpenRules Repository may be considered as a hierarchy of rule workbooks Each rule workbook is comprised of one or more worksheets that can be used to separate information by types or categories Decision tables are the most typical OpenRules tables and are used to represent business rules Along with rules tables OpenRules supports tables of other types such as Form Layouts Data and Datatypes Methods and Environment tables A detailed description of OpenRules tables can be found here 90 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Physically all workbooks are saved in well established formats namely as standard xls or xml files The proper Excel files may reside in the local file system on remote application servers in a version control system such as Subversion or inside a standard database management system OpenRules uses an URL pseudo protocol notation with prefixes such as file classpath http ftp db etc Hierarchies of Rule Workbooks An OpenRules repository usually consists of multiple Excel workbooks distributed between different subdirectories Each rule workbook may include references to other workbooks thus comprising complex hierarchies of inter related workboo
105. n accordance with the SOA principle of loosely coupled services rule services have to specify what they actually need from the objects defined in an external environment For example if an object Insured includes attributes related to a person s military services it does not require that all business rules that deal with the insured be interested in those attributes Such encapsulation of only the essential information in the Excel based data types 84 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 lt 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
106. nRules Inc public class RunGeneratedJava public static void main String args OpenRules User Manual String fileName file rules main DecisionJava xls Decision decision new Decision DetermineCustomerGreeting fileName Customer customer new Customer customer setName Robinson customer setMaritalStatus Single customer setGender Male customer setDob new Bate 107 5 15 5 30 customer setCurrentHour 14 Log info customer getName customer getDob decision put Customer customer Response response new Response decision put Response response decision execute decision log Decision decision getOutput This code does the following e Uses DecisionJava xls to create our decision model e Instantiates instances of the generated classes Cust e Puts these instances into the decision e Executes the decision and prints the output omer and Response You may similarly generate Java interfaces for your own decision models Using Generated Business Maps as a Decision Model Interface The generated Java classes Customer and Response along with class attributes and accessors modifiers include several more convenience methods click on the links to see them In particular you may get a String value of any attribute by its name using the generated method public String getAttribute String attributeName Each generated class also knows how t
107. name Bool String name Date value Boolean value Comparison methods that compare a decision variable with a given name against a given value or another decision variable using a given operator op boo boo bool bool bool boo bool bool bool boo lea lea ca ea ea lea ca ea ea lea domain con con con con con con con con con nparel nparel nparel npare Real Strin Real Strin nparel nparel Bool Strin Bool Strin npare npare Date Strin Date Strin nt String name String op int value nt String namel String op String name2 name String op double value namel String op String name2 namel String op String name2 g g g name String op boolean value g g name String op Date date g namel String op String name2 npareString String name String op String value compareDomain String name String op String Generating Excel Files with new Decision Tables OpenRules allows you to generate xls files with multiple decision tables programmatically by providing the proper Java API The Java class DecisionBook that corresponds to one Excel workbook or an xls file allows 122 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual you to add OpenRules decision tables defined in Java Multiple decision tables can
108. new OpenRulesEngine file rules Data xls int terms int engine run getTerms The standard installation includes a sample project DataArrays that shows how to deal with predefined arrays How to Define Data for Aggregated Datatypes When one Datatype includes attributes of another Datatype such datatypes are usually known as aggregated datatypes You have already seen an example of an aggregated type PersonaliInfo with the subtype SSN Similarly you may have two datatypes Person and Address where type Person has an attribute address of the type Address You may create a data table with type Person using aggregated field names such as address street address city address state etc The subtype chain may have any length for example address zip first5 or address zip last4 This feature very conveniently allows a compact definition of test data for complex interrelated structures Finding Data Elements Using Primary Keys You may think about a data table as a database table There are a few things that make them different from traditional relational tables but they are friendlier and easier to use in an object oriented environment The very first attribute in a data table is considered to be its primary key For example the attribute id is a primary key in the data table personalInformation above You may use values like He or She to refer to the proper elements of this table array For exam
109. numbers The bounds of double intervals could be integer or real numbers such as 2 7 3 14 Comparing Integer and Real Numbers You may use the predefined type CompareToInt to compare a decision variable with an integer number that is preceded by a comparison operator Examples of acceptable operators equals to 5 5 Note that absence of a comparison operator means equality You cannot use an explicit operator not to be confused with Excel s formulas Similarly to CompareToInt one may use the predefined type CompareToDouble to represent comparisons with real numbers The comparison values may be presented as integer or real numbers e g lt 25 4 and gt 0 5 Using Comparison Operators inside Rule Tables A user can employ a comparison operators such as lt for less or gt for more directly inside the rules There are several ways to accomplish this Here is an y y p example from the rules table Rule Family 212 Loan1 xls 670 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Validation a 2 x Settings Input Message Error Alert pesn criteria j z I Ignore blank IV In cell dropdown between v Source I Apply these changes to all other cells with the same settings cous Here the sign has an apostrophe in front to differentiate it from an Excel formula The actual implementation of possible comparison operators is provided as an example in the project com openrul
110. o another Note When a rules table has too many rules more than you can see on one page it is better to use the vertical format to avoid Excel s limitations a worksheet has a maximum of 65 536 rows but it is limited to 256 columns Merging Cells OpenRules recognizes the powerful Cell Merging mechanism supported by Excel and other standard table editing tools Here is an example of a rules table with merged cells Rules void testMerge String value1 String value2 Rule C1 C2 value1 equals val value2 equals val String val String val Name Value 3 e 1 One 12 11 21 2 B Two 22 3 a 31 32 ree 4 D 41 42 The semantics of this table is intuitive and described in the following table 63 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Value Value Applied Printed 1 2 Rules Results Al 11421 pe fom i la Al 11421 ee ee Al 31 pe mel e fn Al 41 re e oo A Two noe D Tw none Restriction We added the first column with rules numbers to avoid the known implementation restriction that the very first column the first row for horizontal rules tables cannot contain merged rows More examples can be found in the standard rule project Merge click here to analyze more rules When you use the standard decision tables you may put the standard condition C or an action in the very first column and use numbers to mark each table
111. o create a so called 1 BusinessMap that simplifies the Decision interface For example you may Customer s business map and fill it in as shown below 134 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual BusinessMap mapCustomer Customer createBusinessMap mapCustomer setAttribute name Robinson mapCustomer setAttribute maritalStatus Single mapCustomer setAttribute gender Male mapCustomer setAttribute dob 12 25 1980 mapCustomer setAttribute currentHour 14 decision addBusinessMap mapCustomer BusinessMap mapResponse Response createBusinessMap decision addBusinessMap mapResponse Object output decision executeWithBusinessMaps The complete example can be found in the file Main java of the standard project DecisionWithGeneratedJava The concept of the BusinessMap was created based on the real world request from one of OpenRules customers who maintains multiple decision models that are executed based on oncoming stream of messages Business Maps allow the customer not to be bothered with explicit instantiation of Java interface objects and fill out decision input directly in such maps Business maps that include the following methods 135 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual public interface BusinessMap return String with a name of the business concept for this map xd public String getBusinessConcept return a hash
112. objects or Excel Data tables Defines a decision table that includes Java snippets that specify custom logic for conditions and actions Read more Some Rules tables may refer to templates that hide those Java snippets Pitate Defines a new data type directly in Excel that can be used for testing Creates an array of test objects Creates one test object DecisionTableTest Defines test cases with expected results This table defines the structure of a rules Environment repository by listing all included workbooks XML files and Java packages Defines expressions using snippets of Java Method code and known decision variables and objects DecisionTable1 or DT1 or DecisionTableMultiHit DecisionObject A multi hit decision table that allows rule overrides A multi hit decision table that like DecisionTable2 executes all rules in top down order but results of the execution of previous rules may affect the conditions of rules that follow A special table type used by OpenRules Forms and OpenRules Dialog The following section will provide a detailed description of the major decsioning concepts DecisionTable2 or DT2 or DecisionTableSequence DECISION MODELING AND EXECUTION 90 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual OpenRules methodological approach allows business analysts to develop their executable decisions with underlying decision tables without or only with a limited help from software de
113. olving constraint satisfaction and optimization problems e Finite State Machines for event processing and connecting the dots Integration of these components with executable decisions provides OpenRules customer with a general purpose BRDMS Business Rules and Decision Management System oriented to decision centric application development with externalized business logic OpenRules Inc is a professional open source company that provides software product documentation and technical support and other services that are highly praised by our customers You may start learning about product with the document Getting Started which describes how to install OpenRules and includes simple examples Then you may look at a more complex example in the tutorial Calculating Tax Return This user manual covers the core OpenRules concepts in greater depth Additional OpenRules components are described in separate user manuals see Rule Learner Rule Solver and Rule Dialog Many 70 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual other helpful documents and tutorials can be found online at the Documentation page of www openrules com Document Conventions The regular Century Schoolbook font is used for descriptive information The italic Century Schoolbook font is used for notes and fragments claritying the text The Courier New font is used for code examples CORE CONCEPTS OpenRules is a general
114. omer The name of the decision table EvaluateOneCustomer that will be used to processes each objects form this collection Thus a combination of the two decisions tables similar to the above ones provides business users with a quite intuitive way to apply rules over collections of business objects without necessity to deal with programming constructions Decision Tables for Comparing Ranking Lists In many real world situations decisions are made based on comparison of attributes that belong to different predefined lists of values while the values inside these lists are ordered ranked For example a business rule may sound as follows If Diagnostic Need is Stronger than Sensitivity Level Then Document Access should be Allowed Here the Diagnostic Need could belong to the ranking list 1 Immediately Life Threatening 2 Life Threatening 3 Acute 4 Chronic Similarly the Sensitivity Level could belong to this ranking list 1 High 2 Mid 3 Low Newly defined custom templates allow us to present the relations between these two ranking lists in the following decision table of the new type DecisionTableCompareRanks 43 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual WithSensitivityLevel lt srme Swoner sven wener _ Stoner Somer 5 wener wener wener C wener wener waer Then the above rule may be expressed using the following decision table of the new
115. on Customer customer EvaluateAsset decision return Asset assets customer getAssets customer customerAssetsStatus Insufficient for int i 0 i lt assets length i getGlossary useBusinessObject Asset customer assets i if Sufficient equals customer customerAssetsStatus Changing Decision Variables Types between Decision Runs OpenRules Glossary does not require a user to specify actual types of the variables they are automatically defined from the actual types of decision parameters It allows you to change types of decision parameters between decision runs without necessity to download all rules again If you know that some attributes corresponding to your decision variables may change their types between different runs of the same decision you may use the following Decision s method execute boolean objectTypesVary 120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual If the parameter objectTypesVary is true then before executing the decision the OpenRulesEngine will re evaluate the decision s glossary and will reset types of all object attributes based on the actual type of objects passed to the decision as parameters By default the parameter objectTypesVary is false Decision Execution Modes OpenRulesEngine supports different execution modes by running the standard sequential rule engine or a constraint based inferential engine Before executing a decision
116. on table columns The third row contains decision variables expressed in plain English spaces are allowed but the variable names should be unique The columns of a decision table define conditions and conclusions using different operators and operands appropriate to the decision variable specified in the column headings The rows of a decision table specify multiple rules For instance in the above decision table DefineGreeting the second rule can be read as IF Current Hour is more than or equal to 11 AND Current Hour is less than or equal to 17 THEN Greeting is Good Afternoon 140 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Similarly we may define the second decision table DefineSalutation that determines a salutation word it uses the keyword DT that is a synonym for DecisionTable DT DefineSalutation Condition Condition Gender Marital Status Is Male Is Mr Is Female Is Married Is Mrs Is Female Is Single Is Ms If some cells in the rule conditions are empty it is assumed that this condition is satisfied A decision table may have no conditions but it always should contain at least one conclusion Decision Table Execution Logic By default OpenRules executes all rules within DecisionTable in a top down order When all conditions inside one rule row are satisfied the proper conclusion s from the same row will be executed and all other r
117. on tables Defining Decision Tables OpenRules decision modeling approach utilizes the classical decision tables that were in the heart of OpenRules from its introduction in 2003 OpenRules uses the keyword Rules to represent different types of classical decision tables Rules tables rely on Java snippets to specify execution logic of multiple conditions and actions see below However since the version 6 OpenRules customers mainly use a special type of decision tables with the keyword DecisionTable or DT that do not require Java snippets and rely on the 130 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual predefined templates for various conditions and conclusions For example let s consider a very simple decision DetermineCustomerGreeting Decision DetermineCustomerGreeting Define Greeting Word DefineGreeting Define Salutation Word DefineSalutation It refers to two decision tables Here is an example of the first decision table DecisionTable DefineGreeting Condition Condition Current Hour Current Hour C 1g gt 0 lt 11 Is Good Morning gt 11 lt 17 Is Good Afternoon gt 17 lt 22 Is Good Evening gt 22 lt 24 Is Good Night Its first row contains a keyword DecisionTable and a unique name no spaces allowed The second row uses keywords Condition and Conclusion to specify the types of the decisi
118. ontal rules tables o The keywords extends or implements may be used instead of the keyword template o Template implementations cannot be used as templates themselves Templates for the Default Decision Tables All standard decision and decision tables are implemented using rules templates The rules tables of the type DecisionTable are implemented using several templates located in the following files inside the configuration project openrules config DecisionTemplates xls DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls Decision Templates The file DecisionTemplates xls contains the following rules templates and methods 80 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTemplate Decision decision a template for the tables of type ce agnttial current decision initial Decision ize Lize Decision Decision decision the method that initializes the DecisionRun Decision decision the method that initializes the current decision s run DecisionObjectTemplate the type DecisionObject Decision decision a template for the table of GlossaryTemplate Decision decision a template for the table of type Glossary the Environment table that includes the following references o DecisionTables OPENRUL ES MOD E Templates xls where OPENRULES MODE is an environment variable that has one of the
119. ord only e Ignore word case e Do backup before replace e Deselect files on which you don t want to perform replace Consistency Checking OpenRules provides a special component Rule Solver that along with powerful optimization features allow a user to check consistency of the decision models and find possible conflicts within decision tables and across multiple decision tables The detail description of the product can be found at http openrules com pdf RulesSolver UserManual pdf 350 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual ADVANCED DECISION TABLES In real world projects you may need much more complex representations of rule sets and the relationships between them than those allowed by the default decision tables OpenRules allows you to use advanced decision tables and to define your own rule sets with your own logic Specialized Conditions and Conclusions The standard columns of the types Condition and Conclusion always have two sub columns one for operators and another for values OpenRules allows you to specify columns of the types If and Then that do not require sub columns Instead they allow you to use operators or even natural language expressions together with values to represent different intervals and domains of values Read about different ways to represent intervals and domains in this section below Sometimes your conditions or actions are not related to a particular decisio
120. ors in Excel files before you even deploy or run your OpenRules based application To make sure that Eclipse controls your OpenRules project you have first to right click to your project folder and Add OpenRules Nature You always can similarly Remove OpenRules Nature 28 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual To be validated your main xls files should be placed into an Eclipse source folder while all included files should be kept in regular non source folders OpenRules Plugin displays a diagnostic log with possible errors inside the Eclipse Console view The error messages include hyperlinks that will open the proper Excel file with a cursor located in a cell where the error occurred The following picture shows how OpenRules Plugin automatically diagnoses errors in the Excel files and displays the proper error messages Java RunHelloCustomer java Eclipse SDK import com openrules ruleengine OpenRulesEngine public class RunHelloCustomer SEE Console X Wz defineSalutation customer response fouti From Rules response map get greeting file C OpenRules300 workspace HelloJave rules main HelloCustc Decision Testing OpenRules provides an ability to create a Test Harness comprised of an executable set of different test cases It is important that the same people who design rules usually business analysts are able to design tests for them Usually they create test c
121. osssesssesscossessssesseesseeos 36 Multi Hit Decision Tables isis cossccccsesseaccsvsseacccvasecccccassaccouasceccovadeeccdvaseasscvastaccovascacsovaseassouss 36 Decision TableMultiAitisccscc ceccsastacenesesecnsassascshc cecnssscvacnaadeguensss sdseedseduensesaugeni eaeedves s 37 DECISION TableSequent sicsdesiaacesseshatdansaniaduiassniadeiatraastaatunlesaedearaneuadiueieinsiltalanadad 39 Minimizing the Size of Decision Tables cccssssccccsssscccecssssccecnssccccceesceceecssesceeessseceeensss 40 Business Rules Defined on Collections Of ODjects sscsccssssscccssssseccssssecceessssceensssseeeens 41 Decision Tables for Comparing Ranking Lists cccssssscccsssssccccssssccccsssceccccssesceeessssceaeenss 43 Defining and Using Rule Identification ccccsssscccsssssceccssssceccesssseccecsseeccecssssesanssseeeoess 44 Spreadsheet Organization ANd Management ssceeeessssccccsssscccccssscsccccsssscccesssscsees 45 20 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Workbooks Worksheets and Tables csssccssssccssscccssccsssccssscccssccccescesssssnssceesessessesenses 45 How OpenRules Tables Are REcOBMIZEd ji iiiiescccisss cists sosecciesseveteesotvevesssevdstisoseadieseessstecosees 46 RUNES Tables siias ansees ea Teseseedutiscatesieuseiecbasvecedssconscocavvacedvsscadssiaaseieeees 48 Rules Table Example wiisssisscccsssssccccscceccccesccccacsssecccssdsssctecdsvecceescedcccsdsacsossdssscctadsvecouasssscseac
122. ou may freely use parentheses to define a desired execution order You also may use any standard or 3rd party Java methods and functions e g Math min RtLine A RtLine B If the content of the decision table cell contains only a value of the text variable say Customer Location then along with Customer Location you may also write Customer Location even without and In the following table DT DefineWhomToCharge Condition Condition Emy FASE O e f Vendor A Emy TRUE is UNKNOWN Is Not aeh KLM the conclusion column contains references Vendor and Provider to the values of decision variables Vendor and Provider You may also use similar references inside arrays For example to express a condition that a Vendor should not be among providers you may use the operator Is Not One Of with an array ABC Vendor XYZ The macro O ObjectName is used when you need to refer to an object ObjectName which corresponds to as a business concept inside the glossary If you use this macro make sure that ObjectName is specified exactly as the proper Java class or Excel Datatype no spaces allowed Here is an example from the sample project DecisionHello DecisionTable DefineResult Conclusion Greeting S Salutation 0 Customer name I 220 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Using Regular Expressions in Decision Table Conditions OpenRules
123. ple to print the full name of the person found in the array personalInformation you may write the following snippet 94 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Personalinfo pi personaliInformation He out pi fisrtName pi middeInitial pi lastName Cross References Between Data Tables The primary key of one data table could serve as a foreign key in another table thus providing a cross reference mechanism between the data tables There is a special format for data tables to support cross references Data datatypeName tableName This format adds one more row in which you may add references to the other data tables where the data entered into these columns should reside The sign gt is a special character that defines the reference and referencedDataTable is the name of another known data table Here is an example Data TaxReturn taxReturns eam fem pe a annsa eereareonscea Taxable Earned Income m e p E He She i O 32026 Both columns TaxPayer and Spouse use the reference gt personalInformation It means that these columns may include only primary keys from the table personalInformation In our example there are only two 95 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual valid keys He or She If you enter something else for example John instead of He and save your Excel file you will receive a compile time error Index Key John not found G
124. purpose BRDMS that allows customers to develop their own custom Business Decision Management Systems OpenRules utilizes the well established spreadsheet concepts of workbooks worksheets and tables to build enterprise level rule repositories Each OpenRules workbook is comprised of one or more worksheets that can be used to separate information by types or categories To create and edit rules and other tables presented in Excel files you can use any standard spreadsheet editor such as e MS Excel e Google Docs e OpenOffice Google Docs is especially useful for collaborative rules management OpenRules supports different types of spreadsheets that are defined by their keywords Here is the list of OpenRules tables along with brief description of each 80 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Defines a decision that may consist of multiple Decision sub decisions associated with different decision tables This is a single hit decision table that uses Decision Lable E LI ae multiple conditions defined on different DecisionTableSingleHit or variables to reach conclusions about the RuleFamil decision variables For each decision variable used in the decision tables the glossary defines related business concepts as well as related implementation attributes and their possible domain Associates business concepts specified in the glossary with concrete objects defined outside the decision i e as Java
125. re values listed through commas to the conclusion variable that is expected to be an array Takes the conclusion decision variable adds to it a value from the rule cell and saves the result in the same decision variable Takes the conclusion decision variable subtracts from it a value from the rule cell and saves the result in the same decision variable Takes the conclusion decision variable multiplies it by a value from the rule cell Multiply 7 and saves the result in the same decision variable Takes the conclusion decision variable divides it by a value from the rule cell and saves the result in the same decision variable Note that for the operators Add and Are that work with arrays of values separated by commas you may add your own character separator at the end of the operator to use it in cases when values inside array contain commas Conditions and Conclusions without Operators Sometimes the creation of special columns for operators seems unnecessary especially for the operators Is and Within OpenRules allows you to use a simpler format as in this decision table 19 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual If Then ried l Greeting 0 11 Good Morning 11 17 Good Afternoon 17 22 Good Evening 22 24 Good Night As you can see instead of keywords Condition and Conclusion we use the keywords If and Then respectively While this decision table looks
126. ression simply surrounds expression with brackets and concatenates it with an empty String as below W expression Here is the list of currently available macros that can be used inside Java snippets within Excel tables of the type Decision DecisionTable with various extensions and Method Variable Macro Format Type Expanded As variable ni String decision getString variable name name I variable a Integer decision getInt variable name name Rivariable Real decision getReal variable name name Divariable ae f Date decision getDate variable name name Bivariable Boolean decision getBool variable name name Vivariable Vy getVar decision variable name ar name used by Rule Solver O ObjectName Object ObjectName decision get BusinessObject ObjectName The character after indicates the variable type following the variable name in curly brackets The name like variable name is used for String variables The following example uses macros for real and integer decision variables 210 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTable CalculateTotalPayments Conclusion Total Payments O Total Payments O Sl R Tax Withheld R Earned Income Credit SI Extra Inside the expressions you may use any operator and any other valid Java operator Y
127. rides when rules defined below already executed rules could override already executed actions Let s consider the following example DecisionT able2 Calculate Taxablelncome Condition Conclusion Tarate meom Pf es Adjusted Gross Income Dependent Amount CS o o Here the decision variable Taxable Income is present in both the condition and the action The first unconditional rule will calculate and set its value using the proper formula The second rule will check if the calculated value is less than 0 If it is true this rule will reset this decision variable to 0 Minimizing the Size of Decision Tables When your decision table contains too many columns it may become too large and unmanageable In practice large decision tables have many empty cells because not all decision variables participate in all rule conditions even if the proper columns are reserved or all rules To make your decision table more compact OpenRules allows you to move a variable name from the column title to the rule cells To do that instead of the standard column s structure with two sub columns Oper Value you may use another column representation with 3 sub columns ConditionVarOperValue Variable Name_ Oper Value 40 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual This way you may replace a wide table with many condition columns like the one below DecisionTable classifcationRules
128. ring xlsMainFileName String methodName allows you to also define the main method from the file xlsMainFileName that will be executed during the consecutive runs of this engine 109 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Here is a complete example of a Java module that creates and executes a rule engine see HelloJava project package hello import com openrules ruleengine OpenRulesEngine public class RunHelloCustomer public static void main String args ustomer customer customer customer Response Object String fileName file rules main HelloCustomer x1ls tring methodName helloCustomer S OpenRulesEngine engine new OpenRulesEngine fileName C customer new Customer setName Robinson setGender Female setMaritalStatus Married response new Response objects new Object customer response engine run methodName objects System out println Response response getMap get greeting response getMap get salutation customer getName As you can see when an instance engine of OpenRulesEngine is created you can create an array of Java objects and pass it as a parameter of the method Engine Runs The same engine can run different rules and methods defined in its Excel files You may also specify the running method using setMethod String methodName or use
129. rray and within such array conditions ORs are allowed Consider for example the following more complex decision table Saving Account bebUATY Cara Chectng Account New Bronze Saver Overdeatt Prot Saving Account CO wiht 25 pesis port increase Naney Martel Mutual Fund Credt Card Web Banking CO with 25 besis poni norsase Money Market Mutual Fund Crect Card 4 Checking Accosnt Saving Account Mew Bronze Siver Checiung Accautt CO wth 25 dasi port increase Honey Martet Matua Fund Credit Care CO wit 25 basis point increase Haney Martet Mutuai Fund Web Banting Checking Account Saving Account CO wit 25 dase pont norease Money Martet Metual Fused Web Santng CD with 50 bess pont ncrease Money Market Mutual Fund Creda Card DebUATM Card Web Ganking CD wth SC besis pont norease Money Usrket Uutual Fund Credit Card DebtATM Card Web Banheg Brokerage Account T Cb wan 20 bast pont ncrease Money Market Nutual Fund Creda Card wth no amauni tee DebtiaTy Card Web Banting w h no charge Erobarage Account Here the decision variables Customer Profile Customer Product and Offered Products are arrays of strings In this case the second rule can be read as IF Customer Profile Is One Of New or Bronze or Silver AND Customer Products Include Checking Account and Overdraft Protection AND Customer Products Do Not Include CD with 25 bas
130. rules tables are created based on the same rules template it could be inconvenient to keep the same default rules in all extended tables As an alternative you may add the rules tables based on the same template The location of the default rules depends on the types of your rules tables Templates for Single Hit Rule Tables Single hit rules tables usually end their execution when at least one rules is satisfied However when conditions in all specified rules are not satisfied then a single hit table usually uses the last rule s to specify the default action s The 750 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual rules from the template will be executed after the actual rules defined inside the template implementation Let s consider an example We have shown that without modification the rules tables above would not produce any greeting if the parameter hour is outside of the interval 0 24 Instead of adding the same error message in both summer and winter rules we could do the following make our defineGreeting template a single hit table by changing a return type from void to String add the default reaction to the error in hour directly to the template Rules defineGreeting App app int hour Siring Cl min lt hour amp amp identifiers Signature now returns Conditions and Actions return greeting has been ERROR Invalid Hour hour lt m
131. s If you want to use static Java methods defined in some standard Java libraries and you do not want to specify their full path you can use the property import static The static import declaration imports static members from Java classes allowing them to be used in Excel tables without class 103 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual qualification For example many OpenRules sample projects use static methods from the standard Java library com openrules tools that includes class Methods So many Environment tables have property import static defined as com openrules tools Methods This allows you to write out Rules 1 instead of Methods out Rules 1 Integration with XML Files Along with Java classes OpenRules tables can use objects defined in XML files For example the standard sample project HelloXMLCustomer uses an object of type Customer defined in the file Customer xml located in the project classpath lt Customer name Robinson W gender Femal maritalStatus Married age 55 J gt The xls file HelloXmlCustomer xls that deals with this object includes the following Environment table Environment com openrules tools Methods classpath Customer xml importjava_ _ hello Response include _ include HelloRules xls The property import schema specifies the location of the proper xml file in this case classpath Customer xml Of course you can use
132. s an array of column labels selected from the proper template The fourth parameter is an array of names that corresponds to the column type it could be either a name of the decision variable or a title of the proper column The fifth parameter is a two dimensional array of strings where each sub array represents one rule or the decision table row The method public void saveToFile String xlsFile saves this decision book in the Excel file whose name is provided as a parameter The method public int getNumberOfRuleTables 125 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual returns a number of decision tables currently added to the decision book Please note that the proper Excel file will contain a separate worksheet for each decision table Logging API OpenRules provides an API for decision logging Assuming that decision is an instance of the class Decision you may use the following logging methods e To log print any text string you may write decision log text e To memorize the execution log you may write decision saveRunLog true decision execute Then all log statements produced during this decision run will be saved internally e You may get this saved log as follows Vector lt String gt log decision getRunblog You may print the saved log by the method decision printSavedRunLog or you may save it into a file by the method decision printSavedRunbLog filename This featur
133. sccccssssccccsssceccensseeceeesseseeeeenes 94 Finding Data Elements Using Primary Keys sssssccsssssscccsssssecccssesccecssssccecsssseeaesseeseenss 94 Cross References Between Data Tables ccsssscccsssssceccssssceccasssceccecssssceacssesccacssseeeeesnss 95 OpenRules RO DOSILOIY wes ssicnuivedidescccecccouvecdevetccivescuessVovstsaedernecesdevessneuestceesiivessieceeetes 96 Logical and Physical Repositories ccccsssssecccsssccceccsssccccsssccceccsscececcssssceacsseeceacssesceeenses 97 Hierarchies Of Rule Workbooks sssssecsssssceccsssseeccnssseccecssseccacssseccecsssescanssssseanssseeeonss 98 included Workbooks riirn a EE 98 Include Path and Common Libraries of Rule Workbooks c scccccceeeseesssteeeeeeeens 99 Using Regular Expressions in the Names of Included Files cccssssseeeessteeeeeees 100 Imports fromJava nsession e a E A a E a a aa 100 imports from XML siinne a EE i aaan 101 Parameterized Rule ReEpOsitOries cccccssssccccssscececcssccceccsscececcessecseeeseecessssessseassesssoes 102 Integration With Java ODjeCtS 233 5 cc50 cccsssesecceesssccceesssecceads eeccacseseccacssssccesessdodassssceassssneoes 103 Integration With XML Files si ccicicceccssesenccsssesecaseissveceesstucccess sscsacneseccccssessoassesstedassssterssssncoes 104 Integration with Relational Databases cccccssssscecsssccceccsssececcssceceecsssecessesseeeesesseeeeens 106 Rules Version CONtIONs
134. sed the engine to get an example of the object taxReturn that was described in Excel data tables DynamicObject taxReturn DynamicObject engine run getTaxReturn Then we added this object to the decision decision put taxReturn taxReturn and simply executed decision decision execute The Decision described in Decision xls is supposed to modify certain attributes inside the object decision and objects which were put inside the decision after its execution 1140 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Constructors The class Decision provides the following constructor public Decision String decisionName String xlsMainFileName where decisionName is the name of the main table of the type Decision and xlsMainFileName is the same parameter as in the OpenRulesEngine s constructor that defines a location for the main xls file There is also another constructor public Decision String decisionName OpenRulesEngine engine where the parameter OpenRulesEngine engine refers to an already created instance of the OpenRulesEngine as in the above example Each decision has an associated object of type Glossary When a decision is created it first executes the table glossary that must be defined in our rules repository It fills out the glossary a step that applies to all consecutive decision executions You may always access the glossary by using the method
135. selves using includes The rule repository can include files from different physical locations 99 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Complex branches on the rules tree can encapsulate knowledge about their own organization Using Regular Expressions in the Names of Included Files Large rule repositories may contain many files workbooks and it is not convenient to list all of them by name In this case you may use regular expression inside included file names within the Environment table For example consider in the following Environment table Environment include category1 xls include category2 XYZ xls include category3 A xls The first line will include all files with an extension xls from the folder categoryl The second line will include all files with an extension xls and which names start with XYZ from the folder category2 The third line will include all files with an extension xls that start with a letter A following exactly one character from the folder category1 ek Actually along with wildcard characters or you may use any standard regular expressions to define the entire path to different workbooks Imports from Java OpenRules allows you to externalize business logic into xls files However these files still can use objects and methods defined in your Java environment For example in the standard example
136. ssccsssssseccssssceccessseccecssssccenssssssansssseeeess 65 Integer and Real Intervals c cccccccccssssssssecececeescsessaeseeeeeesceesesaeseeeeeeeesesesesaeeeseeeess 65 Comparing Integer and Real NUMbELS cc cccccesstececsesteeecesseeeeceeseaaeeeessaeesesssneeeess 67 Using Comparison Operators inside Rule Tables ccccccsssececesssececeeseeeeeessneeeeesees 67 Comparing Dales cisecseiccciesvscdesagevdenseate cdahde E A E cdenig 69 Comparing Boolean VNUs sisses cesccensievevencocserenten ss siiret asi ia nEn EE ANNEKE KERE 69 Representing String DOMAINS eressero eina Eaa 70 Representing Domains of NUMberS cc cccccccecsessssssecececeeecsesesenaeeeesesesssessaeeeseeeens 71 Using Java Expressions ssssssssssesesrsssssssrrreresssssssrerreosssseseerreesssssseerroesssesseerrorsssessent 72 Expanding and Customizing Predefined Types cscccccsssssececssseeceeeesseeeeesssaeeeesses 73 Performance COnsiderations ccccccccccssssssscecececsssessaesececcesceeseeseeeeeessessesssaeeeeeeeens 73 RULES TOMPlAteS veccisccisesdcecaiecasssdastscccvssesvebiacesseeedesssnssacceedseaestsussacesvesydeessaecasssssssseabass 73 Simple Rules Templates lt ciccs5 lt cccciessccwcss hes cdvvienccdcveeecevssieccwscbnececuuvbevccecsacescuussescesestedseuusteves 74 Defining Rules based on Templates ccssssccccsssscccccsssscccccsssececcssccccnssssecceesseeccecssesseaenses 75 Templates for Single Hit Rule Tables
137. stCases you may test the decision as follows decision test testCases This method will execute your decision for each test case from the table testCases considering them as separate runs Executing Decision Methods From Excel There is one more form of this method decision execute String methodName It is used within Excel when you want to execute another Excel method It is implemented as follows public Object execute String methodName return getEngine run methodName 1170 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Glossary Every decision has an associated business glossary see above Glossaries are usually presented in Excel tables that may look like this table glossary Glossary glossary Variable Gender Date of Birth Customer Greeting Salutation Response fsaitaton hour Cid Current Hour In large real world projects the actual content of business concepts such as the above Customer can be defined in external applications using Java based Business Object Models or they may come from XML files a database table etc The list of attributes inside business objects can be very large and or to be defined dynamically In such cases you do not want to repeat all attributes in your Excel based glossary and then worry about keeping the glossary synchronized with an IT implementation It is possible to programmatically define extend the definition of the Glossar
138. t 3 123 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual decisionBook addDecisionTable CheckGreeting table name DecisionTableTemplate template name new String ConditionVarOperValue Message labels new String lt Var gt lt Oper gt lt Value gt Message titles new String rules new String Result Is Not Good Afternoon Error Expected Good Afternoon new String Result Is Good Afternoon Good Result 3 decisionBook saveToFile rules include Rules xls The first statement DecisionBook decisionBook new DecisionBook simply creates an instance of the class DecisionBook Then we add two rules tables to this decision book by using decisionBook addDecisionTable Then you may easily map this Java structure to the above decision table DefineGreeting It is created based on the standard template DecisionTableTemplate Then the strings If If Then define the selected table columns from this template The next array of strings Current Hour Current Hour Result defines the names of decision variables used in these columns Then we have a two dimensional array of strings where each sub array represents one rule or the table row such as new String gt 0 lt 11 Good Morning Depending on the column type instead of the names of the decision variables the column titles may contain any text in plain English For
139. t table may return any standard or custom Java class such as String or Customer Instead of basic Java types such as int you should use the proper Java classes such as Integer in the table signature 59 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Here is an example of Java code that creates an OpenRulesEngine and executes the latest rules table defineSalutation public static void main String args String fileName file rules main HelloCustomer xls OpenRulesEngine engine new OpenRulesEngine fileName Customer customer new Customer customer setName Robinson customer setGender Female customer setMaritalStatus Married String salutation String engine run defineSalutation customer System out printin salutation Rule Sequences There is one more type of rules tables called Rule Sequence that is used mainly internally within templates Rule Sequence can be considered as a multi hit rules table with only one difference in the execution logic conditions are not evaluated before execution of the actions So all rules will be executed in top down order with possible rules overrides Rule actions are permitted to affect the conditions of any rules that follow the action The keyword Rules should be replaced with another keyword RuleSequence Let s get back to our swapX example The following multi hit table will correctly solve this problem
140. t will be displayed in your Eclipse Problems windows It is extremely important that the cross references are automatically validated at compile time in order to prevent much more serious problems at run time Multiple examples of complex inter table relationships are provided in the sample rule project AutoInsurance Here is an intuitive example of three related data tables Data Driver drivers John Smith 24 Male Single 2 Mary Smith 19 Female Sine 0O Data Vehicle vehicles 7 ie ae 1999 FALSE Data Usage usages John Smith See more complex examples in the standard project AutoInsurance OPENRULES REPOSITORY To represent business rules OpenRules utilizes a popular spreadsheet mechanism and places rules in regular Excel files OpenRules allows users to build enterprise level rules repositories as hierarchies of inter related xls files 96 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The OpenRules Engine may access these rules files directly whether they are located in the local file system on a remote server in a standard version control system or in a relational database Logical and Physical Repositories The following picture shows the logical organization of an OpenRules repository and its possible physical implementations Physical Rule Repositories Logical Rule Repository Local File System f Remote Workbooks Application k Decisio
141. tables created and modified by the standard DB management tools 2 Live rules tables in memory dynamically modified by an external GUI 3 Java objects of the predefined type RuleTable 4 Problem specific rule sources that implement a newly offered rules provider interface With external rules you may keep the business parts of your rules in any external source while the technical part Java snippets will remain in an Excel based template based on which actual rules will be created by the OpenRulesEngine For example you may keep your rules in a regular database table as long as its structure corresponds to the columns conditions and actions of the proper Excel template Thus the standard DB management tools or your own GUI that maintains these DB based rules tables de facto become your own rules management environment The external rules may also support a preferred distribution of responsibilities between technical and business people The business rules can be kept and maintained in a database or other external source by business analysts while developers can continue to use Excel and Eclipse to maintain rules templates and related software interfaces 140 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The detailed description oof external rules in provided at http openrules com pdf OpenRules UserManual ExternalRules pdf OPENRULES PROJECTS Pre Requisites OpenRules requires the following software Java SE J
142. tion or execute them locally using a simple Java API However when you are ready to integrate your business rules into an enterprise level application OpenRules provides a push button mechanism for deployment of business rules as Web Services The sample project HelloWS demonstrates how to deploy an OpenRules based application as a web services Two related sample projects HelloWSJavaClhient and HelloWSExcelClient demonstrate how to execute a web service from a Java based or MS Office based client Read more here Deploying Rules and Forms as Web Applications Presentation oriented Web applications usually generate dynamic Web pages containing various types of markup language HTML XML and so on in response to requests coming from an Internet Browser Among the most popular Web techniques for web application development with Java are Java Servlets Struts and application frameworks such as Spring All these techniques use Java programming language to dynamically process requests and construct responses in a form text based markup such as HTML or XML All these techniques are oriented to experienced software developers This seriously limits the participation of business analysts in the design and maintenance of business interfaces OpenRules can be easily integrated with any of these techniques using its Java API However OpenRules provides its own straight forward mechanism for web application development without the involvement of he
143. tsideCredit s YN nce value lance value Score lt max String String String tor op value or op rates level level AND Education AND AND Loan Internal Internal Balance Credit Analyst Rating Opinion String YN int min String YN AND AND IF Outside AND Credit Card Mortgage Credit Score Loan Balance Holder Holder THEN Debt Research Recomme ndations Value Oper Value We may create a rules table that implements this template using only conditions C1 C2 C5 C6 and the action A1 Rules MyDebtResearchRules template DebtResearchRules Outside Credit Education Loan Mortgage Score Balance Research Internal Credit Rating EEE dations The additional second row specifies which conditions and actions from the original template are selected by this rules table The order of conditions and actions may be different from the one defined in the template Only names like C2 C6 and A1 should be the same in the template and in its implementation It is preferable to use unique names for conditions and actions 78 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual inside templates If there are duplicate names inside templates the first one from left to right will be selected You may create several columns using the same condition and or action names Templates with Optional Conditions and Actions There is another way to use optional conditions and act
144. uded The reason for this is that only RulesA1 xls really cares about these files Naturally its own table Environment contains the proper include Environment importjava ___ incide SubCategoryA1 RulesA11 xls SubCategoryA1 RulesA12 xls Here both includes are defined relative to the directory CategoryA of their parent file RulesA1 xls As an alternative you may define your included files relative to a so called include path see sample in the next section Include Path and Common Libraries of Rule Workbooks Includes provide a convenient mechanism to create libraries of frequently used xls files and refer to them from different rule repositories You can keep these libraries in a file system with a fixed include path You may even decide to move such libraries with common xls files from your local file system to a remote server For instance in our example above you could move a subdirectory libA with all xls files to a new location with an http address http localhost 8080 my common lib In this case you should first define a so called include path and then refer to the xls files relative to this include path using angle brackets as shown below http localhost 8080 my common lib lt libAVlibRulesX_xls gt lt libAlibRulesX_xls gt Here we want to summarize the following important points The structure of your rule repository can be presented naturally inside xls files them
145. ules will be ignored At the same time OpenRules supports other types of decision tables specified in the OMG standard DMN Note OpenRules decision tables can also be used to implement a methodological approach known as TDM and described in the book The Decision Model It relies on a special type of decision tables called Rule Families that require that the order of rules inside a decision table should not matter It means that to comply with the Decision Model principles you should not rely on the default top down rules execution order of OpenRules decision tables Instead you should design your decision table you even may use the keyword RuleFamily instead of DT in such a way that all rules are mutually exclusive and cover all possible combinations of conditions The advantage of this approach is that when you decide to add new rules to your rule family you may place them in any rows without jeopardizing the execution logic However in 150 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual some cases this approach may lead to much more complex organization of rule families to compare with the standard decision tables AND OR Conditions The conditions in a decision table are always connected by a logical operator AND When you need to use OR you may add another rule row that is an alternative to the previous rule s However some conditions may have a decision variable defined as an a
146. use some predefined rule names in templates Instead of creating an empty rules table with the needed name you want to use the above parameter mayNotDefined directly in Excel 1110 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Let s say you need to execute rules tables with names such as NJ_Rules or NY_Rules from another Excel rules table but only if the proper state rules are actually defined You may do it by calling the following method from your rules Method void runStateRules OpenRulesEngine engine Customer customer Response response String methodName customer state _Rules Object params new Object 2 params 0 customer params 1 response engine run methodName params true We assume here that all state specific rules NJ_Rules NY_Rules etc have two parameters customer and response To use this method you need to pass the current instance of OpenRulesEngine from your Java code to your main Excel file as a parameter engine If you write an OpenRules Forms application this instance of the OpenRulesEngine is always available as dialog getEngine otherwise you have to provide access to it e g by attaching it to one of your own business objects such as Customer By default OpenRules will produce a warning when the required Excel rules table or method is not available You may suppress such warnings by calling engine turnOffNotDefinedWarning Accessing
147. ustomers name maritalStatus gender age Customer l Name Marital Status Gender Age Robinson Married Female 24 Smith Single Male 19 Method Customer getCustomers return customers In you Java program you may access these objects as follows OpenRulesEngine engine new OpenRulesEngine file rules Data xls DynamicObject customers DynamicObject engine run getCustomers System out printin nCustomers for int i 0 i lt customers length i System out printin t customers i This code will print Customer id 0 name Robinson age 24 gender Female maritalStatus Married Customer id 1 name Smith age 19 gender Male maritalStatus Single You may use the following methods of the class DynamicObject public Object getFieldValue String name public void setFieldValue String name Object value For example String gender String customers 0 getFieldValue gender 139 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual will return Female and the code customer setFieldValue gender Male customer setFieldValue age 40 will change the gender of the object customers 0 to Male and his age to 40 EXTERNAL RULES OpenRules allows a user to create and maintain their rules outside of Excel based rules tables It provides a generic Java API for adding business rules from different external sources such as 1 Database
148. uteQ we may simply call decision test testCases The Decision s method test will execute all tests from the Excel table 30 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual testCases using business objects defined in the columns of the type ActionUseObject After the execution of each test case the actually produced results will be automatically compared with the expected results which are defined in the columns of the type ActionExpect All mismatches will be reported in the execution log For instance the above example will produce the following records Validating results for the test lt Test 1 gt Test 1 was successful Validating results for the test lt Test 2 gt MISMATCH variable lt Patient Creatinine Clearance gt has value lt 48 03 gt while lt 48 04 gt was expected Test 2 was unsuccessful 1 test s out of 2 failed You may add any number of business objects and decision variables with expected results to your test cases An example of the test harness can be found in the project DecisionPatientTherapyTest in the standard installation Decision Execution Reports OpenRules provides an ability to generate decision execution reports in the HTML format To generate an execution report you should add the following setting to the decision s Java launcher decision put report On before calling decision execute By default execution reports are not generated as they are needed m
149. velopers You may become familiar with the major decision modeling concepts from simple examples provided in the document Getting Started and several associated tutorials First we will consider the simple implementation options for decision modeling and later on we will describe more advanced OpenRules concepts Starting with Decision From the OpenRules perspective a decision contains a set of decision variables that can take specific values from domains of values a set of decision rules frequently expressed as decision tables that specify relationships between decision variables Some decision variables are known decision input and some of them are unknown decision output A decision may consist of other decisions sub decisions To execute a decision means to assign values to unknown decision variables in such a way that satisfies the decision rules This approach corresponds to the OMG standard known as DMN Decision Model and Notation OpenRules applies a top down approach to decision modeling This means that you usually start with the definition of a Decision and not with rules or data Only then you will define decision tables and then put related variables into a glossary After you define a top level decision you may want to specify test data wit expected results even before you specify the actual decision logic Here is an example of a Decision 100 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual
150. y For example we may leave in the Excel s glossary only statically defined business concepts and their variables e g in the above table we may keep only the variables of the concept Response and remove all rows related to the concept Customer Then in the Java module that creates an object decision of the predefined type Decision we may add the following code Decision decision new Decision fileName String attributes getCustomerAttributes String businessConcept Customer for int i 0 i lt attributes length i String varName attributes i getName decision getGlossary put varName businessConcept varName 118 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual decision put customer customer decision execute Here we assume that the method getCustomerAttributes returns the names of attributes defined in the class Customer The variable name and the attribute name are the same for simplicity of course you may define them differently You may add multiple concepts to the Glossary in a similar way In all cases keep in mind that the table Glossary glossary always has to be present in your Excel repository even when it contain no rows You also may find that the same method put variableName businessConcept attributeName of the class Glossary is used in the Glossary Template definition in the standard file DecisionTemplates xls Business Concepts and Decision Objects OpenRu

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