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1. s void define Salutation Customer custo BEREE mE Marital Status n Female Married Ms Femae Ss Single O Ms The rules implementer will decide that to support this rule table type Customer should have at least two attributes gender and maritalStatus and the type Response should be able somehow to save different pairs names value hike salutation Mr Knowing the development environment s he will decide on the types of attributes Let s assume that both types Customer and Response correspond to Java classes and the attributes have the basic Java type of String In this case the column Gender will be marked with a parameter String gender and the condition will be implemented as a simple boolean expression customer gender equals gender The second column C2 is implemented similarly with a String attribute and a parameter maritalStatus Finally to make it a little bit more complicated we will assume that the class Response contains an attribute map of the predefined Java type HashMap in which we can put get pairs of Strings So the implementation of the action Set Salutation will look like response map put Salutation salutation 55 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual How Rule Tables Are Executed The rules inside rule 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
2. Merging Cells OpenRules recognizes the powerful Cell Merging mechanism supported by Excel and other standard table editing tools Here is an example of a rule table with merged cells 64 O Rules void testMerge String OpenRules Inc value1 String value2 OpenRules User Manual Rule C1 C2 value1 equals val value2 equals val String val String val Name Value 1 One 12 11 21 2 B Two 22 3 Th 31 32 ree 4 D 41 42 The semantics of this table is intuitive and described in the following table Value Value Applied Printed 1 2 Rules Results A1 11 21 s le A1 11 21 8 two gt in Al 31 rome gt daa Al 41 pme e dive A Two noe D Two 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 rule 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 in the very first column and use numbers to mark each table 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 65 OpenRules I
3. aE E A a zipCode_ ZipCode 08840 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 Method int getTerms return Arraylnt getValues terms Data Arraylnt terms value Term 36 72 108 144 2 ArrayDouble for arrays of real numbers e g Method double getCosts return ArrayDouble getValues costs Data ArrayDouble costs value 1140 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Costs 295 50 550 00 1 000 00 2 000 00 3 295 00 5 595 00 8 895 00 3 ArrayString for arrays of strings e g Method String getRegions return ArrayString getValues regions BEIE PAEVNI lalalemcsrel e als value Region NORTHEAST MID ATLANTIC SOUTHERN MIDWEST MOUNTAIN PACIFIC COAST 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 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
4. OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Multi Hit Rule Tables A multi hit rule 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 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 THe x is equal to 1 then make x to be equal to 2 TE 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 app x 1 app x 2 if ll he Sa app x 2 app x 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 rule 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 57 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules Overrides in Multi Hit Rule Tables There could be situations when all conditions in two or more rules rows are satisfied at the same time multiple hits
5. 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 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 If Then panes 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 much simpler in comparison with the functionally identical decision table defined 24 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual above we need to make an implicit assumption that the lower and upper bounds for the intervals 0 11 11 17 etc are included Using Decision Variable Names inside Decision Table Cells When your decision table contains too many columns it may become too wide 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
6. hour hour lt max int max a a ST This part of the rule table 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 Row Condition and Action Headers see row 4 in the table above The initial columns with conditions should start with the letter C for example C1 Condition 1 The columns with actions should 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 hour is 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 49 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual System out printlin greeting World This code will print a string composed of the variable greeting and World where greeting will be chosen from a row where all of the conditions are satisfied Again if houris 15 then both conditions Cl and C2 will be satisf
7. instead of X Representing String Domains Let s express a condition that validates if a customer s internal credit score 1s 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 Internal Credit Rating ABC DF DF ABC 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 720 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 DomainiInt e DomainIntc e DomainDouble e DomainDoublec For example here is a condition column with e
8. Does Not Match Not Like Compares if a string does not Match Is Not Like Different Different From match a regular expression 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 For integer and real numbers and for strings Checks if a value is among elements of the domain of values listed through comma For integer and real numbers and for strings Checks if a Is Not A Is not among Not among value is NOT among elements One Of of the domain of values listed through comma To compare two arrays Returns true when the first array decision variable Inchide Merg ladie aM include all elements of the second array value within decision table cell Is One Is One of Many Is Among Is One Of Among 220 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Do Not Include Exclude One Of To compare am atray On yelue with an array To compare two arrays Returns true when the first Does Not array decision variable does Include taolad Notan 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 The following operators can be used inside decision table conclusions Assigns one value to the co
9. or use it directly in the engine run 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 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 yun boolean mayNotDefined true engine run methodName businessObjects mayNotDefined 90 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 use some predefi
10. 0 If it is true this rule will reset this decision variable to 0 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 public class CollectionOfCustomers Customer customers int minSalary int maxSalary int numberOfRichCustomers int totalSalary We 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 44 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual won 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 marcel ad EvaluateOneCustomer SS ee Salary Ce sea a lean EC A a Pay attention that we use here a multi hit table DecsionTable1 so both rules will be executed The first one unconditionally calculate the to
11. 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 115 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual defined your own Datatype Customer and created an array of customers in Excel Data Customer customers name maritalStatus gender age Customer R 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 1160 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual For example String gender String customers 0 getFieldValue gender will return Female and the code customer setFieldValue gender
12. Data table for a Datatype that includes one dimensional arrays 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 1110 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 The first signature row consists of two merged cells and starts with the keyword Data The next word should 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 type
13. Date value void getBool String name Boolean value o Comparison methods that compare a decision variable with a given name against a given value or another decision variable using a given operator cc op boolean comparelInt String name String op int value boolean compareInt String namel String op String name2 boolean compareReal String name String op double value boolean compareReal String namel String op String name2 83 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual boolean compareBool String name String op boolean value boolean compareBool String namel String op String name2 boolean compareDate String name String op Date date boolean compareDate String namel String op String name2 boolean compareString String name String op String value boolean compareDomain String name String op String domain o the Environment table that includes the following references DecisionTable OPENRULES MODE Templates xls where OPENRULES MODE is an environment variable that has one of the following values e Execute the default value for Decision Table execution templates e Validate for Decision Table validation templates e Solve for execution of decision models using Rule Solver DecisionTableExecuteTemplates
14. any other Java Comparable type Here is an example of comparing Dates Er 2 15 2007 I 1 1 2007 2 15 2007 gt 2 15 2007 lt 2 15 2007 70 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 produces a Boolean e g loan additionalIncomeValidationNeeded 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 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 710 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules void DecisionTable Test t only actions marked with X will be executed You can use any other character
15. 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 33 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Usually they create test cases directly in Excel by specifying their own data object types and creating instances of test objects of these types Read more at the section Defining Test Data Decision Syntax Validation OpenRules allows you to validate 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 The validation template is described in the standard file DecisionTableValidateTemplates xls If you use the Eclipse Plugin it will display 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 OpenRules Plugin automatically diagnoses errors in the Excel files and displays the proper error messages inside Eclipse views like at the picture below 34 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual impo
16. i defineSalutation person app Igreet Person System_out_printin app greeting app salutation person_name l DATA MODELING 105 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 rule 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 In 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 together with live process modeling all
17. int you should use the proper Java classes such as Integer in the table signature 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 ustomer customer new Customer ustomer setName Robinson ustomer setGender Female ustomer setMaritalStatus Married tring salutation String engine run defineSalutation customer System out printin salutation naaana Rule Sequences There is one more type of rule tables called Rule Sequence that is used mainly internally within templates Rule Sequence can be considered as a multi hit rule 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 610 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual another keyword RuleSequence Lets get back to our swapX example The following multi hit table will correctly solve this problem app x oldValue will fail because when x is equal to 1 the first rule will make it 2 and the
18. mongageHol outsideCredits lt erececar SUERTE remaire irtemaisnal ow owe daame m Rating wsRO pinton This table is too wide and difficult to read so we could actually transpose it toa more convenient but equivalent format 300 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Customer customers Peter N Robert 157 82 5344 056 45 8233 241 56 9082 monthlylincome monthlyDebt mortgageHolder outsideCreditScore 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 310 OpenRules Inc Ope
19. of the type DecisionTable are implemented using several templates located in the following files inside the configuration project openrules config DecisionTemlates xls contains the following rule templates and methods for the decision tables o DecisionTemplate Decision decision a template for the tables of type Decision o initializeDecision the method that initializes the current decision o decision the method that returns the current decision 82 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 DecisionObjectTemplate Decision decision a template for the table of the type DecisionObject GlossaryTemplate Decision decision a template for the table of type Glossary Methods that return values of decision variables based on their names aint getInt String name double getReal String name String getString String name Date getDate String name boolean getBool String name o Methods that set values of decision variables based on their names void getInt String name int value void getReal String name double value void getString String name String value void getDate String name
20. rules table Rules void helloVVorld int hour ee Good Morning _ Good Afternoon Good Evening Good Night Hopefully this rule table is not much more difficult to compare with the default DecisonTable It states that if the current hour is between 0 and 11 the greeting should be Good Morning etc You may change Hour From or Hour To if you want to customize the definition of morning or evening This table is also oriented to a business user However its first row already includes some technical information a table signature Rules void helloWorld int hour Here Rules is an OpenRules keyword for this type of tables helloWorld is the name of this particular rules table It tells to an external program or to other rules how to launch this rules table Actually this is a typical description of a programming method its signature that has one integer parameter and returns nothing the type void The integer parameter hour is expected to contain the current time of the day While you can always hide this information from a business user it is an important specification of this rule table 48 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual You may ask where is the implementation logic for this rule table All rule tables include additional hidden rows frequently password protected that you can see if you click on the buttons to open the Technical View below Rules void helloVYorldfint hour min lt
21. 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 LoanRequest loan Customer c C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 c6 C7 At Now we can implement this template as the following rule table without the necessity to name all of the conditions and actions in the second row Rules MyDebtResearchRules template DebtResearchRules AND Education Loan AND Balance Internal Credit Rating Min Max Oper Value No 100 550 Mortgag Credit 81 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 c c2 c3 Ca J C5 J Ce KE AND AND AND Credit Card Education AND Balance Loan Balance Internal Credit Rating Value Similarly optional actions may be marked as A1 or Action3 Implementation Notes o Rule templates are supported for both vertical and horizontal rule 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 The rule tables
22. the proper custom templates see file RankTemplates xls is included into the standard OpenRules installation RULE TABLES OpenRules supports several ways to represent business rules inside Excel tables Default decision table is the most popular way to present sets of related business rules because they do not require any coding However there classical decision tables can represent more complex execution logic that is frequently custom for different conditions and actions Actually standard DecisionTable is a special case of an OpenRules single hit decision table that is based on a predefined template see below Since 2008 OpenRules allows its users to configure different types of custom decision tables directly in Excel In spite of the necessity to use Java snippets to specify custom logic these tables are successfully used by major corporations in real world decision support applications This chapter describes different decision tables 47 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 Simple Rule Table Let s consider a simple set of HelloWorld rules that can be used to generate a string like Good Morning World based on the actual time of the day How one understands such concepts as morning afternoon evening and night is defined in this simple
23. 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 This way you may replace a wide table with many condition columns like the one below DecisionTable classifcationRules Condition Condition Condition Conclusion Conclusion 10054 Oper Value fis Hih 66 e ee ee ee Is Zz 2 a ee ae to a much more compact table that may look as follows 25 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTable classifcationRules ConditionVarOperValue ConditionVarOperValue ConditionVarOperValue Conclusion Conclusion E_PRTSCRP TOT Ld lt 6955 AGI TPI_RATIO OTH_EXPNS_AMT gt ORD_DIVIDENDS 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 Decision variable name Operator Value Using Formulas inside Decision Tables OpenRules allows you to use formulas in the rule cells instead of constants The formulas usually have the following format expression where an expression can be written using standard Java expressions Here is an example DecisionT able CalculateAdjustedGrossIncom
24. tools jar contains the following optional facilities operators described 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 asimple JDBC interface DbUtil text validation methods like isCreditCardValid String text described in the Java class Validator If you use the JSR 94 interface you will also need e com openrules jsr94 jar 130 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual If you use external rules from a database you will also need e openrules db jar e openrules dbv jar e derby jar e commons cli l l jar 3 ec Different workspaces like openrules decisions openrules rules ete 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 xls e DecisionTableValidateTemplates xls 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 location and simply modify this reference making it relative to your main xls file TECHNICAL SUPPORT Direct all your technical questions to support openrul
25. 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 28 OpenRules Inc 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 f
26. 64 Sub Columns and Sub Rows for Dynamic ArrayS sscccsssssececsssssceccessececsessecssesssseeseessseees 65 Using Expressions inside Rule Tables ssscccsssssscccssscecccsssscceccsscscccsesseceecsssecceesseeeeeensss 66 Integer and Real Intervals c cccccccccssssssssececececsesesssaeeeeeeeescsesesaeaeeeeeeesessesesaeeeseeeess 66 Comparing Integer and Real NUMbELS cccccssssecessssnececssseeeececsseaeeeeseaeeeessseeeeees 68 Using Comparison Operators inside Rule Tables c cccessseceesssseeeeesseeeeeeessaeeeeeees 69 Comparing Dates v 22 iesiccessdiede sssccsexstadern E E EE E sienececnaaiete RRT 70 Comparing Boolean Values ccccsesscececececeesesseseeeceeeeeeseseaeseeeeeeseessesssaeeeeeeseneeeeaes 71 Representing String DOMAINS eee ee cece cece cece ee ee ee ee tee te ttt ttt teen sissit sdonis ienaa 72 Representing Domains of Numbers 3 siisccsesesceesaseatcesavs seneasveceverereedeesaceaesruecseeretenncoducn 73 Using Java EXPressSlOns sin usns a R EE EAEE ATER 73 Expanding and Customizing Predefined Types csccccecesstececssseeeeceeeseeeeesesaeeeeeses 75 Performance COnsiderations cccccccccsssssssececececscsesensesececeescsesesseaeseeeeseessessaeeeseeeens 75 RUM Templates vcvsscsccccersscesscevssteinssedeevesnestsvnsessecesvecsaaveanesscubavectedcvdsdedassescacdessesesteneace 75 Simple Rules Templates 0 ccccccssisceccsssesvccsessceccaseseccbeds secs casss
27. Account DedUATU Cara Wee Bankers CD with 25 besis poni noraase Money Market Mutual Fund Credt Card Checking Accostt Saving Acom Checking Account Saving Account CO wth 25 dasi point ncrease Money Martet Matua Fund Credit Care CD wit 25 basis point ncrease Maney Martet Metuai fund Web Banting CO wm 25 dese pont norease Money Martet Metual Fuad Web Santing CD with 50 bess pont norease Money Market Mutual Fund Credt Card DebtATM Card Web Baring CD with S0 basis pont morease Money Usrket Mutual Fund Cred Card DebtiaT Card Web Banteg Broterage Account CD with 0 basis poni norease Money Market Mutual Fund Creca Card wth no aneuai tee DebtiaTy Card Web Banting w h no charge Eeoterace Account are None Sorry 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 basis 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 OpenRules supports multiple ways to define operators within decision table conditions and conclusions When you use a t
28. 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 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 ae peg or 9 E multiple conditions on different defined on 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 DecisionObject glossary with concrete objects defined outside the decision i e as Java objects or Excel Data Glossary 80 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Ee ae a a 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 Datatyp Defines a new data type directly in Excel that can be used for testing Creates an array of test objects 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 Met
29. 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 Rules void defineGreeting int ho a a a A Good Morning a Pl o O O Good Evening 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 Note Using Rules Templates you may completely split business and technical information between different Excel tables Decisions do not use technical views at all because they do not require any coding and rely on predefined templates DECISION MODELING AND EXECUTION OpenRules methodological approach allows business analysts to develop their executable decisions with underlying decision tables without or only with a limited help from software developers You may become familiar with the major 140 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual decision modeling concepts from simple examples provi
30. IF ALL conditions are satisfied THEN execute ALL actions If at least one condition is violated evaluation of the code produces false all other conditions in the same rule row are ignored and are not evaluated The 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 rule 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 rule tables all rules columns are executed in left to right order Relationships between Rules inside Rule Tables 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 rule 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 rule tables that offer different execution logic to satisfy different practical needs Multi hit rule tables Single hit rule tables Rule Sequences 560
31. 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 rule 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 rule 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 58 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Let s consider the execution logic of the following multi hit rule 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 Salutation Male Mr Female Married Mrs Female Single Ms If a customer is a married female the conditions of the second rules are satisfied and the salutation Mrs will be selected This is only a business view of the rules table The complete view including the hidden implementat
32. Male customer setFieldValue age 40 will change the gender of the object customers 0 to Male and his age to 40 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 example to print the full name of the person found in the array personalInformation
33. N SNESEN EEES TONSURE VN TO ESSN 15 Defining Decision Tables sc c sscsccscsscssccsssseccsssssscccssesssocsessssccssesssncses sccsacsssoscassssscosssssoasases 18 Decision Table Execution WO BIG sis casasesscodcudvaadeevariat dctavecdterseecehnciaeiee eia a EENAA iaiia 20 AND OR Condition SsidicascutsancatstcarvneeaanetienisariiaarasiniGameasea iateaate omens 20 Decision Table Operators adcuscetpcccnindeesedsntendencalowus tanernsdzamiitaacinactdsarnamrunlecuineanievaedecs 21 Using Regular Expressions in Decision Table Conditions cc ccccccccssssesssseeeeeeeees 24 Conditions and Conclusions without Operators cssccccesssececesssneeeecseseeeesssteeeens 24 Using Decision Variable Names inside Decision Table Cells ccccsssseeeeeessteeeeeees 25 Using Formulas inside Decision Tables cccccccssssssscececeescessesseaeeeeeeseessessaeeeeeeeens 26 Direct References to Decision Variables ccccccccsesssececeeeceesesseaeeeceeeesssessaeeeeeeeess 27 Defining BUSINESS GlOSSAMY iiiis coos cise escastccseckcveesesesbocseedevccsdedsmocased succsssusbensssssvccsdcesvecsssdsvecss 28 Defining Test Data ssisciscisisccccssceccccsscescacescaccacsstescscesseccsesecsscacsssaccacssssscccsassssseasssssssasssssseases 29 Connecting the Decisions with Business Objects ssssccsssscccsssssccccssssceccesssssccesssseeeesees 31 Decision EX cutionis viciisssseccissssceccsaseecdiassnseccesssecdiacsscecceaseecdiassecedcssszesscasses
34. OPEN BFA mh A Oh OpPENRULES Open Source Business Decision Management System Release 6 2 5 User Manual OpenRules Inc www openrules com August 2013 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Table of Contents INTO GUCUION MPAA EE AAAA 6 Brief HiStOry siisscicsiscccccsscceccccsdecccstscevccessssvecsssscvcssssesccstedavecsvssasecsesssacdevsesacssdesavedivessssdensdanis 6 OpenRules COMPONENES TTT 7 DOCUMENT CONVENTIONS os icccccicivesscsscsccccsssveccsasssccssossuesssascaccsssssvesssasasccssassuesscanascessssavesssassses 7 COLE CONCEDES i viccsccvectescntcovsscvevedescosssesvecesecoocedsecdetoatedvvcsdsesdedevvedsosssooisenssswdvdasdsnedasevene 8 Spreadsheet Organization ANd Management sscsereesscsccecssssccccssssssccecssssccccssssescoees 9 Workbooks Worksheets and Tables csssccssssccsssccssccssssccsseccnssccsssccessescsscesseecesseseeseees 9 How OpenRules Tables Are RECOBNIZEd siciccscicccsssiissscsssisccccssissscsesissccasiissscobadsscconssssecooasss 10 OpenRules Rule Table Example vis cssscsccasssesccssscecsondssiccceastiesvasssccoaatecesndass codeasssesnvsssaccoeas 12 Business and Technical Views sss ccsssscesssssscctsssssccsssssscnssacsscocssssssctsassscctcacszenscaasssossaisesndeases 13 Decision Modeling and Execution sciscssisssvssiacvscsssecnsisddssrsiescssvsanssaaveanseadassvsseassassuseares 14 Starting with DeCiSION ss ccccissccccesscsvecenssswsceasesncctesssvccbs SNr O O
35. OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 and they should always be preceded by which indicates the decision tables will actually be executed by the OpenRules engine 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 Variable DecisionTableVariable1 Define Variable 2 DecisionTableVariable21 Define Var
36. 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 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 used the engine to get an example of the object taxReturn that was described in Excel data t
37. Salutation Rows with three rules that can be read as 1 IF Gender is Male THEN Set Salutation Mr 2 IF Gender is Female and Marital Status is Married THEN Set Salutation Mrs 3 IF Gender is Female and Marital Status is Single THEN Set Salutation Ms While business specialists continue to define such rule tables at some point a technical specialist should take over and add to these tables the actual implementation The technical specialist familiar with the software environment into which these rules are going to be embedded talks to the business specialist author of the rule table about how the rules should be used In the case of the defineSalutation rule table they agree that the table will be used to generate a salutation to a customer So the technical specialist decides that the table will have two parameters 1 acustomer of the type Customer 2 a response of the type Response The technical specialist will modify the signature row of the table to look like this Rules void defineSalutation Customer customer Response response Then she he inserts three more rows just after the first signature row 54 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Row 2 with Condition Action indicators Row 3 with Condition Action implementation Row 4 with the type and name of the parameters entered in the proper column Here is a complete implementation of this rule table
38. TTCEPETTCEEET ETE 119 Logical and Physical Repositories cccccssssecccssscececcsscececcsssecsccesseesecesseceeeessessessseseeees 120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Hierarchies of Rule Workbooks ois cccscicccsssccccsccsscccssssessssasactconsdcsecscasvccessdssnsscevsvccoasdansessee 121 Included Workbooks cceceeeesessecececececeesneeaecececeeeceeseaeaeseeeeseessessaaeeeeeesesseesnsenaees 121 Include Path and Common Libraries of Rule Workbooks c ssccceceeesessensaeees 122 Using Regular Expressions in the Names of Included Files cccsssssceeeesteeeeeees 123 Iimports from JAVA is sseccvecsvezsdeosscezvoetecsagevssabavesssauds cess uaveesuatesssevsaivavens EE a 123 Imports from XML uu ceccccecessessssecececeesceeseeeaecececeesceuseaeseseeeeeeseseseeaeseeeesesseesesenaeees 124 Parameterized Rule ReEpOsitOries cccccssssecccssscececcessececcessecsccsscececcesceceesesseeseeasseeeeees 125 Rules Version CONtON ssc cesiccendedssscosssvccensevassessssvscnnsscesstesesvesesscuuveesensvaewessuusedesseverecscwusess 125 Rules Authoring and Maintenance Tools ccccssssccecssscececcsssecsccesceseccssceceesesseessssseeeeees 126 Database INTEGIOLION sisississessscasscssasoiaaearsasvandevieeacsasnssascoebassassvsasisasvecualatvancssaseaewansas 128 External R l S icc cccciecdesesscecsecesveccevestvcsvedsestisdosesensasvaciesuevssvesessuduessocesvecede eden sesssoneses 128 OpenRules 12d 0 o
39. a Daa Vat a Ea Decision Table CalculateInternalVariables Single Hit O aT E Is getInt Monthly Debt getInt Loan I Income getlnt Loan Term Decision Table DetermineIncomeV alidationResult Single Hit acme Vaatin Ror Is More Than getInt Total Debt 2 Decision Table DetermineDebtResearchResult Single Hit Outside Credit Credit Card Edocation Loan Internal Credit Internal Analyst Holder Score Score Babace Balance Rateg Opimion lt ae m _ R a Mortgage Ovtside Credit 37 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Table DetermineLoanQualificationResult Single Hit Executed pu 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 OpenRules relies on the standard Java logging facilities for the decision output They can be controlled by the standard file log4j properties that by default looks like below log4j rootLogger INFO stdout log4
40. ables DynamicObject taxReturn DynamicObject engine run getTaxReturn 93 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 Glossary glossary decision getGlossary Decision Parameters 94 OpenRul
41. al 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 170 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 decision tables Defining Decision Tables OpenRules decision modeling approach utilizes the classica
42. ally 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 themselves using includes The rule repository can include files from different physical location
43. ation 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 10 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 110 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Table Title Keyword lt some text gt Something Something Something Something So
44. ation imports static members from Java classes allowing them to be used in Excel tables without class 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 103 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual out Rules 1 instead of Methods out Rules 1 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 Ww gender Femal maritalStatus Married age 55 gt The xls file HelloXmlCustomer xls that deals with this object includes the following Environment table Environment import static com openrules tools Methods classpath Customer xml importjava _ hello Response O Z Y 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 any other location in your local 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 OpenRul
45. ay 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 aget 1 by putting in front of your Java expression for example driver age 1 Make sure that the expression s type corresponds to the parameter type 520 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Empty cells inside rules means whatever and the proper condition is automatically considered 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 te n Lo Note Excel is always trying to guess the type of text is inside its cells a
46. cationResult 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 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 The following options are available e Perform search before replacing e Match whole word only e Ignore word case e Do backup before replace e Deselect files on which you don t want to perform replace Here is an example of its graphical interface 39 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual IJ Match whole word oniy E ignore case Backup before replace E Don t 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 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 ac
47. ctor OpenRulesEngine String 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 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 String fileName file rules main HelloCustomer xls String methodName helloCustomer OpenRulesEngine engine new OpenRulesEngine fileName Customer customer new Customer customer setName Robinson customer setGender Female customer setMaritalStatus Married Response response new Response Object objects new Object customer response engine run methodName objects System out println Response response getMap get greeting response getMap get salutation customer getName 89 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 m run 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
48. cuted when an hour passed to this table as a parameter is between Hour From and Hour To In the table defineSalutation an action Set Salutation will be executed when a customer s Gender and Marital Status correspond to the proper row These tables start with signature rows that are determined by a keyword in the first cell of the table A table signature in general has the following format Keyword 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 the current OpenRules configuration For example type may be any basic Java type such as int double Date or String The rule tables above are recognized by the keyword Rules 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 Business and Technical Views OpenRules tables such as Rules and Data may have two views 1 Business View 130 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 2 Technical View These two views are implemented using
49. d single hit rule table which is specified by putting any return type except void after the keyword Rules The following is an example of a single hit rule table that will do exactly what we need Rules defineSalutation Customer customer Response response Gender Marital Status i 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 rule 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 rule table produces a salutation without an additional special object 60 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules String defineSalutation Customer customer C1 C2 Al customer gender customer maritalStatus reir Salutation equals gender equals status j String gender String status Gender Marital Status Male Female Married Female Single 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 hit table may return any standard or custom Java class such as String or Customer Instead of basic Java types such as
50. d 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 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 initialized 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 Testing OpenRules provides an ability to create a test harness comprised of an
51. d 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 ar aang lastName pe aera String ___faddress String String EAN String String Now we can create several objects of this type PersonalInfo using the following data table 107 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Personallnfo personallnformation Ge eee Me She firstName FirstName John Mary middleinitial Middle Initial IN A lastName _ address Address 25 Maple Street aye ee Aay e i oee Edison oo ee EE E a nn zipCode_ ZipCode 08840 We can reference to these objects inside rules or forms as in the following snippets out personalInformation He lastName if personaliInformation She state equals NJ You may use one datatype such as Pe
52. dName 96 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 Response frsitaion hour Cid 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 Glossary 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 le
53. ded 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 68 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 example from the rule table Rule Family 212 Loan1 xls op compare You may use the Excel Data Validation menu to limit the choice of the operators 69 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Validation gt lt lt gt 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 openrules 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 Comparing Dates You may use the standard java util Date or
54. ded 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 oncoming OMG standard known as DMN OpenRules applies a top down approach to decision modeling This means that we usually start with the definition of a Decision and not with rules or data Only then we will define decision tables a glossary and then data Here is an example of a Decision Decision DeterminePatientT herapy Decisions Define Medication DefineMedication Define Dosing DefineDosing Define Creatinine Clearance CalculateCreatinineClearance Check Drug Interaction WarnAboutDrug lnteraction Here the decision DeterminePatientTherapy consists of four sub decisions 15 0
55. e Adjusted Gross Income getReal Wages getReal Taxable Interest getReal Unemployment Compensation This decision table has only one conclusion that simply calculates a value for the decision variable Adjusted Gross Income as a sum of values for the decision variables Wages Taxable Interest and Unemployment Compensation This example also demonstrates how to gain access to different decision variables you may write getReal VARIABLE NAME for real decision variables Similarly you may use methods getInt getBool getDate and getString 26 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual You may also put your formula in a specially defined Method and then refer to this method from the decision table observe how it is done in the following example Method double taxablelncome return getReal Adjusted Gross Income getReal Dependent Amount Decision Table Calculate Taxablelncome Condition Taxablelncome IsTrue taxablelncome gt 0 _Is_ taxableincome IsFalse taxableincome gt 0 Is 0 ___ Here we defined a new method taxableIncome that returns a real value using the standard Java type double Then we used this method inside both conditions and one conclusion of this decision table Note Actually the formula format expression is a shortcut for a more 6099 standard OpenRules f
56. ed 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 Any custom Java class with a public constructor that has a String parameter One dimensional arrays of the above types 510 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Multiple parameters can be used in the situations when one code is used for several columns See the standard example Loan1 xls 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 m
57. elloWS 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 anURL 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 Use a URL like http www example com rules Main xls 88 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual when Main xl1s 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 constru
58. ent RuleExecutionSet 101 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 the 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 an example HelloFromThreads that demonstrates how to organize a parallel execution of the same OpenRulesEngine s instance in different threads and how to measure their performance INTEGRATION WITH JAVA AND XML Java Classes 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
59. ent 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 2 4 Male Sne 2 Mary Smith 19 Female Single 0O Data Vehicle vehicles 1999 FALSE Veh 1 Data Usage usages _John Smith MarySmith Vveh2z 10 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 The OpenRules Engine may access these rules files directly whether they are 119 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 Remote Application Servers Workbooks Decision Tables 4 Rule Templates 1 Data Modeling it Rule Tests a Methods Form Layouts Version Con
60. er Balance Value Oper Value THEN Debt Research Recomme ndations We may create a rule 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 Boconmen Oper Value dations The additional second row specifies which conditions and actions from the original template are selected by this rule table The order of conditions and actions may be different from the one defined in the template Only names like C2 C6 and Al should be the same in the template and in its implementation It is preferable to use unique names for conditions and actions inside templates If there are duplicate names inside templates the first one 80 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 actions 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 is not necessary to use the second row to specify the
61. es User Manual Maintenance Tools User Interfaces AS Technical ma jet wn a vn f 5 Users Technical Users IG 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 Google Spreadsheets are especially useful for sharing spreadsheet editing see section Collaborative Rules Management with Google Spreadsheets 127 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual For technical people responsible for rules project management OpenRules provides an Eclipse Plug in that allows them to treat business rules as a natural part of complex Java projects DATABASE INTEGRATION 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 EXTERNAL RULES OpenRules allows a user to create and maintain their rules outside of Excel based rule tables It provides a generic Java API for adding business rules from different external sources such as 1 Database tables created and modified by the standard DB management tools 2 Live r
62. es package com openrules tools Methods 2 xml file classpath Customer xml 3 Java class Response from a package hello 104 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 HelloXMLPeop1e 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 and 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
63. es Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 of decision parameters are changed between different decision runs you may u
64. es Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 12 14 etc 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 20 error left bound is greater than the right one 670 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual equals to 5 equals to 5 ae cena a contains 5 but not 10 cau ie k ak does not contain 5 and contains 10 mors lade al AA 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 You may use many other ways to represent integer intervals as you usually do in plain English The only limitation is the following min should always go before max Similarly to integer intervals one may use the predefined type FromToDouble to represent intervals of real 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 prece
65. es com or to this Discussion Group Read more at http openrules com services htm 131
66. es with Default Rules for Multi Hit Tables Multi hit rule 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 770 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual rules from the template will be executed before the actual rules defined inside the extended tables 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 C1 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 be produced if all other rules in the rule 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 Templates with Default Rules for Single Hit Tables Single hit rule tables usually end their execution when at least one rules is satisfied However when condit
67. esaeaeeeeeeseessesssaeeeeeeeens 90 Accessing Password Protected Excel Files cccsssscccsssseeeceessceeecsssaeeecseseeeeeeesenaes 92 Engine AttachM ntS sa 20daieudcetatdus ddetgaudaaddaducancelauvaentaaviereaiaadtdonquvdacsSeusdlitanetediegeaneaaened 92 Engine VOrSlOMsscvcicesvevesc ceveccadeavevexdehes eniri aiina ieii a TATE i EENE RNA EEKE 92 Dynamic RUSS UPdate Sss iusussenssoscistneupinisoniiniusnn ionii anniari anan iii iine 92 Be E a EAE ORO E T T E E E E T O E E 93 Decision Example 21 cgesdd lt usduscessagescedagaiacesuious echedxaceseayssbebesaduteceiouvddeosduacassagcnerieqwiaceasads 93 DECISION GOMSERUCTONS surmise nionean db sedeceleadaddeve a aa aa 94 Decision Parameters ssesssssseesssesssssseerrerssssssesrreeressssssrreroesssesseneeoesssesseneseressessens 94 Decision RUNS ossitats saaa a a aa as aa ae oee e erae 95 Executing Decision Methods From Excel cssccccssssseeceessaececssnneecessneeeeeessaaeeeenes 96 Decision GIOSSANY seisatasisariaccassasacnstuaianaandenasd eautaceadnearaneeialanemeacedantacdaimen aeons 97 Business Concepts and Decision Objects cssccecsssssececssneeceessseeeeceeseeeeceessaeeeeeses 98 Changing Decision Variables Types between Decision RUNS scsseceeeesteeeeesseeeeees 99 Decision Execution MOdeS cc cccccccccsssssessnsecececeescsesenseseseeeesesssesssaeeeseesesseesesssaees 100 LOBBING AP seed E TTT T 100 JSR 94 Implementation iccssciccccsscsciccsssscacsssss
68. esecosssessere 47 Simple Rule Table isicvsessisccesssssccsessssccestasssvsessiisvessssseesesasssvessaassesessisseesssaisnsessisscestaatensesssien 48 How Rule Tables Are Organized sssssssessesssssssssssssssosssssoossseosssseooseesooesssesssessossssesssesseese 50 Separating Business and Technical Information ccccsssssceccesssceccsssscsccsssssccensssseeeeseeees 53 How Rule Tables Are Executed iicicccccscsccscsisicccscseecsovsseaccsvascecsovasceccdvascassovassscosvassecesvassscooeas 56 Relationships between Rules inside Rule Tables cccccessscecssssececeeseeeeeessenaeeeeeees 56 M lti Ait Rule Table Seron a pantie stauieteeroaaes 57 Rules Overrides in Multi Hit Rule Tables ccccccssssececcescessesseaeeeeeeseessessaeeeeeeeens 58 Sie S Hit ROMS Va DSS saa cessincsvesnesenacotedanveiacsaineaadsnintontsienueacnucnseuudenaseedseuxheedenceeteuenveues 60 R le SSQUGICES o sitigectelesaleceeatqeteaeciadt aieidgvidacesdlzeccesd EE TETEK G E aa ae 61 Relationships among Rule Tables ccccccccccccecsesessssececeeeesceeseceeseeeeeessessessaeeeseeeens 62 Simple AND OR Conditions in Rule Tables sssesesesesesesesesesesesesereseseseseseseseseseseneseseness 63 Horizontal and Vertical Rule Tables sssssccsssssceccssssceccccssseccecssssccecssseccacssssseenssseseoess 64 Merging Cells iccccccsssscsscssssscccsssessccessscccsssszsnscesssscsceeseseccesscssccsesesnassezsscocseseseccasiesscoasszsnooasis
69. essaasessdaasszeesoasss 32 DGCISIOMAMALYSIS E EN EE EE E E EE ENE E EE E E EE A 33 Decisiom TEStiNg vesesenssca espn sseveie onna E a a AE EA E ENE 33 Decision Syntax ValidatiONn casnscsievsscssindnesectverssenp nessa densa teeiandiegaabvestecauniteerenedeiteancenseeeds 34 Decision Execution REPOSTS cccccssssssscececcceccenesssescececesseueusseseececeseuueaussseeceeeseusagaes 35 Decisi TRACING senesinin E E E a E EREET 38 RULES Rep sitory Searchsiesisnsnsiresiiriatresnesinniapte roiie ia ai annain neien aieiaiei 39 Consistency CHECKING sesinin seiniin E E La N SE 40 Advanced DECISION Tables sssssisisiriscsiserisninrisiniririiieiiinnni iini iia 40 Specialized Conditions and Conclusions sssssessssssssessssssossesesssesesosesesssessoessssosseseeesesees 40 Specialized Decision Tables ccscssiiscesssisssesssssscesssssccsesssssvsssaisenenssssseessarscesesasssvestatsesoesasase 41 LB Y tet AE 0 Br 9 il lege ee eee oR ee me ee 41 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DEGISIOM NADIE ssccc sessescccnsscayacecsenidsty ssevseedsessdsunsicassbeusatidsteliecshenteansdesesesvasessee dese seosaces 43 Business Rules Defined on Collections Of ODjects ccccssssscccssssccccesssecceecsseecceessseeeeesees 44 Decision Tables for Comparing Ranking Lists scccsssssccsssssceccsssseccecssseccecsssscseessseeeeess 46 Rule Tables assess icccseicctiosiccasivasincdcosseoseerdevestcesssvccsavdcassivassesesouscesedecdeosdooetsueod
70. ext 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 to avoid confusion with Excel s own formulas isnot Is Not Equal To Not Not Equal Not Equal To Defines an inequality operator Is More More Is More Than Is Greater Greater Is Greater Than For integers and real numbers gt and Dates 210 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Is More Or Equal Is More Or Equal For integers and real numbers S 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 lt Smaller Or Equal To Is Smaller Than Or Equal To Is Smaller Than Or Equal To Ook Is Less Less Is Less Than Is Smaller For integers and real numbers N gt Smaller Is Smaller Than and Dates PS Se Pe 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 Contains Contain ieee sera The comparison is not case sensitive For strings only e g House Starts Start with Start starts with ho The With comparison is not case sensitive Matches Is Like Like Compares if the string matches a regular expression o NotMatch
71. fferent default actions Partial Template Implementation Usually template implementation tables have exactly the same structure as the rule templates they extend However sometimes it is more convenient to build your own rule table that contains only some conditions and actions from already predefined rule templates This is especially important when a library of rule 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 79 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules void DebtResearchRules LoanRequest loan Customer c C2 C3 c mortgag tate lle c loanHol op compare c op compare c e der equal creditCardBala ducationLoanBa s YN nce value lance value contains r c internalA loan debt ates c inte nalystOpin Research rnalCredit jion equals Result Rating level level eHolder eq uals YN c outsideCredit Score lt max String String tor op value or op rates level AND Education AND AND Loan Internal Internal Credit Analyst Rating Opinion String YN int min String YN AND IF AND Credit Card Mortgage Credit Score Loan Balance Holder Hold
72. hod code and known decision variables and objects DecisionTable1 or DT1 or DecisionTableMultiHit A multi hit decision table that allows rule overrides A multi hit decision table that like DecisionTable2 executes all rules in top down DecisionTable2 or DT2 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 these concepts 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 90 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 OpenRules Tab
73. iable 2 DecisionTableVariable22 Define Variable 3 Decision Variable3 decision 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 160 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision DecisionVariable3 Define Variable 3 1 DecisionTableVariable31 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 even 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 Pf Validate ValidateTaxReturn decision fs Tae coca feoeo fe pase owce Since this table Decision Apply1040EZ uses an option
74. ically 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 Report DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults html Report01 DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults html Report02 CalculatelnternalVariables html Report03 DeterminelncomeValidationResult html 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 CalculateInternalV ariables DetermineIncomeValidationResult DetermineDebtResearchResult s DetermineLoanQualificationResult 360 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Below are other generated files one per decision table with lists of rules rows that were actually executed Decision Table DetermineLoanPreQualificationResults Rule Sequence Executed crea ActionExecute Beets Ea EA E
75. ides 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 100 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 getRunLog You may print the saved log by the method decision printSavedRunLog or you may save it into a file by the method decision printSavedRunLog filename This feature 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 see for example how it is done in the latest remote evaluation version JSR 94 Implementation 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 libjard 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 implem
76. ied only for row 9 because 9 lt 15 lt 17 As a result the words Good Afternoon World will be printed If the rule table does not contain a row where all conditions have been satisfied then no actions will be executed Such a situation can be diagnosed automatically 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 The same table can be defined a little bit differently using one condition code for both columns min and max Rules void defineGreeting App app int hour min lt hour amp amp hour lt max i ee es E a ST pd Evening How Rule Tables Are Organized As you have seen in the previous section rule tables have the following structure Row 1 Signature Rules void tableName Typel par1 Type2 par2 Multi Hit Rule Table 50 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules lt JavaClass gt tableName Typel parl Type2 par2 Single Hit Rule 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 merg
77. ility to Eligible The second rule will reset it to Not 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 DecisionTable2 There is one more type of decision table DecisionTable2 that is similar to DecisionTable1 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 we can make two important observations about the behavior of the DecisionTable2 e Rule actions can affect the conditions of other rules e There could be rule overrides when rules defined below already executed rules could override already executed actions Let s consider the following example 43 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTable2 CalculateTaxablelncome Taxable Income f Taxable Income getReal Adjusted Gross Income getReal Dependent Amount Here the first unconditional rule will calculate and set the value of the decision variable Taxable Income The second rule will check if the calculated value is less than
78. in the standard example RulesRepository all rule 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 102 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Environment import_java myjava packA1 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 la com openrules ml my package MyClass com 3rdparty include Rules 1 xls include include Rules2 xls Naturally the proper jar files or Java classes should be in the classpath of the Java application that uses these rules 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 declar
79. ion 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 Al 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 59 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 Single Hit Rule Tables To achieve this you may use a so calle
80. ion variable Condition Decisions ACNSNWANY Because you can use the same column Condition or ConditionAny many times 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 Decision Table Templates The template DecisionTableTemplate serves as a template for all standard decision tables All columns in this template are conditional meaning their names are always required Here are the first two rows of this template Rules String DecisionTableTemplate 85 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual The template DecisionTable1Template serves as a template for all decision tables of type DecisionTable1 Here are the first two rows of this template Rules void DecisionTable1Template The template DecisionTable2Template serves as a template for all decision tables of type DecisionTable2 Here are the first two rows of this template RuleSequence void DecisionTable2Template You can use all these columns as many times as you wish when you may create concrete decision tables based on these templates Please check the file DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls in your standard configuration project openrules config to see the latest version of the decision templates Customization Customizing Default Decision Tables A user may move the abo
81. ionAny like in the example below Decision Table Calculate Taxablelncome Condition PoC IsTrue taxablelncome gt 0 Is Is False taxablelncome gt 0 Is Here the word Condition does not represent any decision variable and instead you may insert any text i e Compare Adjusted Gross Income with Dependent Amount When your conclusion does not set a value for a single decision variable but rather does something that is expressed in the formulas within the cells of this column you should use a column of type ActionAny It does not have sub columns because there is no need for an operator Note There is also a column of type Action that is equivalent to type Then Specialized Decision Tables Sometimes the default behavior of a DecisionTable as single hit rules tables is not sufficient OpenRules provide two additional types of decision tables DecisionTable1 or DT1 and DecisionTable2 or DT2 While we recommend avoiding these types of decision tables in certain situations they provide a convenient way around the limitations imposed by the standard DecisionTable DecisionTable1 41 O OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Contrary to the standard DecisionTable that is implemented as a single hit rules table decision tables of type DecisionTablel or DecisionTableMultiHit are implemented as multi hit decision tables DecisionTablel supports the follo
82. ions 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 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 rule 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 78 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 Signature now returns Rules defineGreeting App app int hour String Conditions and Actions Cl on identifiers min lt hour amp amp hour lt max return greeting has been added int min int max Parameter types and names Hour 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 ERROR Invalid Hour 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 di
83. j appender stdout org apache log4j ConsoleAppender log4j appender stdout layout org apache log4j PatternLayout log4j appender stdout layout ConversionPattern m n 1log4j logger org open1l 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 1log4j PatternLayout log4j appender stdout layout ConversionPattern m n uncomment the next line to see OpenRules debug messages 1log4j logger org openl DEBUG 38 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 ADDITIONAL DEBT RESEARCH IS NEEDED from DetermineLoanQualifi
84. kagel Therefore the proper Environment table inside file Main xls see above contains a property import java with value myjava packagel 123 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 Femal 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 package com openrules tools Methods 2 xml file classpath Customer xml 3 Java class Response f
85. l decision tables that were in the heart of OpenRules BDMS 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 In 2011 OpenRules version 6 introduced a special type of decision tables with the keyword DecisionTable or DT that do not need Java snippets and rely on the predefined business logic for its conditions and conclusions defined on already known decision variables 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 18 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Condition Condition Conclusion Current Hour Current Hour Greeting 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 decision table columns The third row contains decision variables expressed in plain English spaces are allo
86. les 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 i 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 The inform
87. ligible loan terms Eligible Loan Terms 24 36 72 36 72 72 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 rule table designer to decide 730 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 C1 A1 customer monthlylncome 0 8 loan incomeValidationResult customer monthlyDebt gt loan amount loan term result boolean condition IF Income is Sufficient for the Loan String result No UNSUFFICIENT Yes SUFFICIENT Here the actual income validation expression is hidden from business people 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 A1 E E ain me elie el eo Ee result boolean conditi
88. me 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 OpenRules Rule Table Example Here is an example of a worksheet with two rules tables EJ Microsoft Excel HelloCustomer xls File Edit Yiew Insert Format Tools Data Window Help laj x OS SR Belo er 44 Ba ca OOOO O OO i ay Taal OPEIN Rules void defineSalutation Customer customer Response SRE CT Marital Status __SetSalutation ce This workbook is comprised of three worksheets 1 Worksheet Decision Tables includes rule tables 2 Worksheet Launcher includes a method that defines an order and conditions under which rules will be executed 120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 3 Worksheet Environment defines the structure of a rules repository by listing all included workbooks XML files and Java packages if any The worksheet Decision Tables is comprised of two rule tables defineGreeting and defineSalutation Rule tables are a traditional way to represent business decision tables Rule tables are decision tables that usually describe combinations of conditions and actions that should be taken when all of the conditions have been satisfied In the table defineGreeting the action Set Greeting will be exe
89. mes 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 63 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Method void testOR int a int b if a gt 5 b gt 10 System out printIn Something Horizontal and Vertical Rule Tables Rule tables can be created in one of two possible formats Vertical Format default Horizontal Format Based on the nature of the rule 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 rows and the rules themselves go into columns Here is an example of the proper horizontal format for the same rule table helloWorld Rules void helloVVorldfint hour horizontal HourFrom o0 2 e 3 er ing 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 rule table from one format to another Note When a rule 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
90. n the second rules will make it 1 again Relationships among Rule 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 rule 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 62 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Because OpenRules interprets rule 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 Simple AND OR Conditions in Rule 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 rule table Rules void testAND int a int b System out printin 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 a et PCT i xa pane a ee Someti
91. nRules 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 that is used to execute the decision In this case the proper table decisionObjects may look like DecisionObject decisionObjects decision get customer decision get loanRequests 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 Note You cannot use the predefined function decision within the table decisionObjects because its content is be not defined yet You need to use the internal variable decision directly 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 32 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual import com openrules ruleengine Decision public class Main public static voi
92. nc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 rule table Rule Family 212 in the file Loan1 xls If your rule 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 Rule Tables OpenRules allows a rules designer to use almost natural language expressions inside rule 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 expressions to define different intervals for integer and real decision variables inside rule tables Instead of creating multiple columns for defining different ranges for integer and real values a business user 66 OpenRul
93. nccssvesnccoasesnccbodesncsosseancctosssnse 76 Defining Default Rules within Templates ssccccsssssccccssscccccssseceesssseccecssssceeesseeeeaensss 77 Templates with Default Rules for Multi Hit Tables cccccessssececeeesesssssseeeeeeeens 77 Templates with Default Rules for Single Hit Tables ccccceesssseeecessereeeesseneeeeeees 78 Partial Template Implementation ccccssssccccssssccccscssceccessseccecssssccecssssccanssssesansseeseaess 79 Templates with Optional Conditions and Actions sccccsssssececssssscecsessececsesseceeseseeeesees 81 Templates for the Default Decision Tables ssssccssssssccsssssscccsssssccesssssceesssssceeesseseeeess 82 Decisiom Template Seansni A eaa E i 85 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Decision Table Templates cccccccccccsssessssesececeescsessaeseceeeesceesesaeaeeeeeeessesesssaeeeseeeess 85 CUSTOMIZATION fessie ss iececd decssezeeianeteedcenaedas iuedeoceadexseansdthecoena te Hlandaceddeesduxedaanshebleaete lenis 86 OpenRu les API n eiia aa i aiaa a Aan 87 OpenRulesEngine AP lis scccisseesissscesveccssssvecsesosvccdssesvdeescseescscssviveecoseeeds cosveceacosvescsccsvecssceseds 88 Engine CONSUMUCTOMS we tesetscecdercessecestaadcasvaden a cidessassevaadeasvebeecveeieatiareebieevestaavearnelees 88 Engine RUNS siii a te unensaneuecaagseuasasavenueaae EEEE asis 90 Undefined Method ccccccessssccecececessessnsecececeeseseseeaeseceeeescees
94. nclusion 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 more 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 Assign divides it by a value from the rule cell Divide and saves the result in the same decision variable 23 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Using Regular Expressions in Decision Table Conditions OpenRules 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 4 Match d 3 d 2
95. nd 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 Separating Business and Technical Information During rules harvesting business specialists initially create rule tables using regular Excel tables They put a table name in the first row and column names in the second row They start with Conditions columns and end with Action columns For example they can create a table with 5 columns C1 C2 C3 A1 A2 assuming the following logic IF conditions Cl and C2 and C3 are satisfied THEN execute actions Al and A2 Then a business specialist provides content for concrete rules in the rows below the title rows As an example let s consider the rule table defineSalutation with the rules that define how to greet a customer Mr Ms or Mrs based on his her gender and marital status Here is the initial business view it is not yet syntactically correct 53 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Rules define Salutation ae eee Marital Status Set Salutation Female O Singe J Ms A business analyst has initially created only five rows A signature Rules defineSalutation it is not a real signature yet A row with column titles two conditions Gender Marital Status and one action Set
96. ned 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 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 910 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual engine turnOffNotDefinedWarning Accessing Password Protected E
97. ngth i String varName attributes i getName 97 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual decision getGlossary put varName businessConcept varName 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 OpenRules 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 decision get customer decision get loanRequests Internal o The standard mapping is implemented in the DecisionObjectTemplate using the following Glossary s method 98 OpenRules Inc OpenRule
98. on String result IF Condition is True UNSUFFICIENT customer monthlylncome 0 8 customer monthlyDebt gt loan amount loan term SUFFICIENT Now a user can both see and change the actual income validation condition 740 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Notes Do not use Excel s formulas if you want the content to be recognized by the OpenRules engine use OpenRules expressions instead If you want to start your cell with you have to put an apostrophe in front of it i 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 The use of expressions inside OpenRules tables comes with some price mainly in performance for large rule tables This is understandable because for every cell with an expression OpenRules will create a separate instance of the proper Java class during rules execution However having multiple representati
99. on options allows arule designer to find a reasonable compromise between performance and expressiveness RULE TEMPLATES OpenRules provides a powerful yet intuitive mechanism for compactly organizing enterprise level business rules repositories Rule templates allow rule designers to write the rules logic once and use it many times With rule templates you may completely hide rules implementation details from business users OpenRules supports several rule templatization mechanisms from simple rule tables that inherit the exact structure of templates to partial template implementations 75 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Simple Rules Templates Rule templates are regular rule tables that serve as structural prototypes for many other rule tables with the same structure but different content rules A simple rule template usually does not have rules at all but only specifies the table structure and implementation details for conditions and actions Thus a simple rule template contains the first 5 rows of a regular decision table as in the following example Signature with Rules void defineGreeting App app int hour parameters Conditions and Actions Cl pees identifiers Java snippets describe condition action semantics Parameter types and names Business names for conditions and actions min lt hour amp amp hour lt max int min int max Hour From Hour To We may u
100. oogle 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 applications 129 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 OpenRules provides a set of libraries jar files and Excel based templates in the folder openrules config to support different projects Supporting Libraries 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 openrules all jar e poi 3 6 20091214 Jjar e commons logging 1 1 jar or higher e commons logging api 1l 1l jar or higher e commons lang 2 3 jar or higher e log4j3 1 2 15 jar or higher e commons beanutils jar or higher There is a supporting library e com openrules
101. 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 Document Conventions The regular Century Schoolbook font is used for descriptive information The italic Century Schoolbook font is used for notes and fragments clarifying the text The Courier New font is used for code examples 70 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual CORE CONCEPTS OpenRules is a BDMS Business Decision Management System oriented to decision centric application development 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 OpenOffice e Google Docs Google
102. or 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 glossary provides a few intuitive examples of such domains These domains can be used during the validation of a decision Defining Test Data 29 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 monthlyDebt Sting mortgageHolder int _ outsideCreditScore Sting ftanHolder int creditCardBalance int educattionLoanBalance String _ intemalCreditRating Sting 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 aii
103. ormula format expression that also can be used inside decision tables Direct References to Decision Variables You may want to refer to values of some decision variables inside cells for different tables To do that you may simply put a dollar sign in front of the variable name For example in the following table DT DefineWhomToCharge B Provider UNKNOWN a Empty FALSE __ ___ ey lt is Is Not 780 KLM the conclusion column contains references Vendor and Provider to the values of decision variables Vendor and Provider The reference Vendor is similar to the formula getString Vendor You may also use similar references inside arrays For example to express a 270 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual condition that a Vendor should not be among providers you may use the a9 operator Is Not One Of with an array ABC Vendor XYZ 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
104. ou 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 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 Before executing a decision you may validate it by setting a special validation mode Here is a code example String fileName file rules main Decision xls System setProperty OPENRULES MODE Validate Decision decision new Decision DetermineDecisionVariable fileName During the validation along with regular syntax check OpenRules will validate if the values for conditions and actions inside all decision tables correspond to their glossary domains if they are defined As you can see the system property OPENRULES_ MODE defines which mode to use By default this property is set to Execute If you create an OpenRulesEngine before creation a Decision you need to set this property first Logging API OpenRules prov
105. ows If Diagnostic Need is Stronger Than Sensitivity Level Then Document Access should be Allowed Here the Diagnostic Need could belong to the ranking list Immediately Life Threatening Life Threatening Acute Chronic Pe GOWNS 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 DecisionTab ympareRanks CompareDiagnosticNeedWithSensitivityLevel Then the above rule may be expressed using the following decision table of the new type DecisionTableRanking 46 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTableRanking DefineDocumentAccess ConditionCompareRanks i If lt rank1 gt lt stronger weaker gt lt rank2 gt 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
106. ows 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 proper object associated with this field independently of how this object was implemented 106 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 goo
107. pe 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 109 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 PersonalInfo gives an example of a very simple datatype We can define another datatype for a social security number SSN Sting lastName Sting address 1100 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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
108. r 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 rules housed in enterprise class rules repositories OpenRules avoided the introduction of 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 This approach enabled OpenRules users to create and maintain inter related decision tables directly in Excel Initially each rules table included several additional rows in which a software developer could place Java snippets to specify the exact semantics of rule conditions and actions 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 remo
109. ribed 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 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 array and within such array conditions ORs are allowed Consider for example the following more complex decision table 20 OpenRules Inc Chectng Account Overdraft Protector CO wit 25 besis point increase Money Martel Mutual Fund Credt Card OpenRules User Manual Saving
110. rom a package hello 124 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 SeasonRules Rules Version Control 125 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual For rules ve
111. ross multiple decision tables The detail description of the product can be found at http openrules com pdf RulesSolver UserManual pdf ADVANCED DECISION TABLES In real world project you may need 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 40 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 decision 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 a special type Condit
112. rsion 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 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 Rules Authoring and Maintenance Tools OpenRules relies on standard commonly used tools mainly from Open Source to organize and manage a Business Rules Repository 126 OpenRules Inc Business Rules Repository a Business Glossary E Access Control Processing Logic Stvle Sheets teraction Logic OpenRul
113. rsonalInfo to define a more complex aggregate datatype like TaxReturn in this example Datatype TaxReturn Personalinfo spouse Cd Ce a eer eee unemploymentCompensation adjustedGrossincome ee taxWithheld earnedincomeCredit double You may even create an object of the new composite type TaxReturn using references to the objects He and She as in this example 108 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data TaxReturn taxReturns taxablelntere taxWithheld earnedIncomeCredit 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 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 name Name Ger er Arita tal s 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 Dataty
114. rt com openrules ruleengine OpenRulesEngine public class RunHelloCustomer Console defineSalutation customer response out From Rules response map get greeting t file C enRules300 Eclipse Plugin diagnoses any errors 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 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 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 35 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual before calling decision execute By default execution reports are not generated as they are needed mainly for decision analysis Reports are regenerated for every decision run During decision execution OpenRules automat
115. s 1220 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 RulesRepository all rule tables deal with Java objects defined in the Java package myjava pac
116. s User Manual void useBusinessObject String businessConcept Object object 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 ag Asset12 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 EvaluateAsset 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 Method void evaluateCustomerAssets Customer customer 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 99 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual parameters It allows y
117. s that correspond to the types of the column attributes 1120 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Here is an example of the Data table for the datatype PersonalInfo defined in the previous section with added SSN Data Personallnfo personallnformation a a a a E May JA Smith 81293 The table name is personaliInformation and it defines an array of objects of the type PersonalInfo The array shown consists only of two elements personaliInformation 0 for John and personaliInformation 1 for Mary You may add as many data rows as necessary 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 ssni ssn ssn2 ssn ssn3 using the dot convention As you can 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 lue of tl i at data data at data ata kat fll AmA Here is how our data table will look when presented in the horizontal format 113 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual Data Personallnfo personallnformation Mee Mee He She firstName FirstName John Mary ssn ssn2 ____ SSN2 GH address Address 25 Maple Street ma a ao SSS E a y ea Edison
118. scccsssscsccssssssccssesssccssssacccssssssccsosstaccssstacssnssazee 101 T A E AOT A EET A IOON OO IA AA 102 Integration with Java and XMLisiscissessviciscsrcaeiscersecniecescdeveressesnsstsscavscessesrssusversuauesacnd 102 Java Clas SES cen e a a E a a a aN 102 XML Fil Screener i a E E AEE E E aeda 104 Data Modeling veiiiscssciscniisintieusssdsenvieuslinauwess ceaiuisbisanudasuaruunebasnsatunesiidnibbedsesnuleuseunants 105 Datatype and Data Table ssiissssssrissesssusssesssussssssoiassssssssst ssstsssssstassstbsttss vsstkss sst s srs vkss 107 How Datatype Tables Are Organized sssssccsssssscccsssssccssssscccnssssceesssssceansssscenesssseeoess 109 How Data Tables Are Organized 22 cccccssseccscasssecccessssntceassescctsssenccosssesdcaesssndsoassecdsaesssnados 112 Predefined Datatypes wise s ccccicescicccseseceilecccvcedsesccccesesccvcdessssulbecvesdedeasevubosesesteoassstusbaasestebes 114 Accessing Excel Data from Java Dynamic Objects ccssssccccssssseccsssseccessseccecssssccaeeess 115 How to Define Data for Aggregated Datatype ssssccsssssscccssssscesssssscensssssceeesseseeeees 117 Finding Data Elements Using Primary Keys ssscccsssssececcsssececcsscececcsssesessesseeeeensseeesees 117 Cross References Between Data Tables csssssccsssssscccssssseccecssscccecssssccensssscsenssseeeones 118 OpenRules fi e10 1 20 6 CEPECEPEEETERTECCETECECEETET CERT CET CECPCETTCEERTTCOCTETCPTECPRETTCCETECCETE
119. se the following variation of the method execute 95 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 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 metho
120. se this rule 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 a ae Hour To 0 10 Good Morning 11 18 Good Afternoon 19 22 Good Evening 23 24 Good Night and Rules winterGreeting template defineGreeting 0 11 Good Morning 12 17 Good Afternoon 76 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 18 22 Good Evening 23 24 Good Night Note that rule 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 rule 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 Default Rules within Templates When many rule tables are created based on the same rule template it could be inconvenient to keep the same default rules in all extended tables As an alternative you may add the default rules directly to the template The location of the default rules depends on the types of your rules tables Templat
121. t CR PEEEE ELE EETECCEPEE POET EPECEECET PETE ECETTCCEETTTCETTELTEEEPECETTCCETECCEETTTCCTECT TELE CRETE TE 129 Pre ROQUISITOS iiiciincccvistscccecccneccsusteccsedccedsesayssascescteescsessonasesccessceavescssescessscsusescaveusoeescsusees 129 Sample Project wisccisssscscdistsscidssssciscenssaccdisssaasdeaseavidesssavedewssavessssssacdisssaaddesssaasdesssavedesssaass 129 Main Configuration Project vccisiiseccsssscsccosesseccastsivccestssecesessseccasssteccastscecsasssseccdesssecoavsseecess 130 Supporting Librarie S 2iiv 05 00cctssseesevssacncdscesedevetssoieetandeessansoue raided eesuase ed eeaua di devaasseveveds 130 Predefined Types and Templates acc sssccccdsssnccsesavreeceosnasinievuatreenusccechouneaneaipeeusoiuneuines 131 Technical SUD DONE acssesories anenai naaa i Eaa aaea aaa aE 131 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 BRMS on the market Over these years OpenRules has been naturally transformed in a Business Decision Management System BDMS 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 othe
122. tal max and min 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 CalculateCustomer Totals Conclusion Conclusion Conclusion ____ActionRulesOnArray e e e ela scree EvaluateOneCustomer Here the first 3 actions conclusions simply define initial values of collection attributes The last action has 3 sub columns The name of the array of objects as it is defined in the glossary Customers The type of those objects Customer 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 45 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 foll
123. 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 CategoryA rules main To invoke any rules associated with this file Pa SubCategoryA1 the proper Java program creates an OpenRulesEngine using RidesA 1S 35 a string file rules main Main xls as a parameter RulesA 12 xls i There are many other xls files related to the Main xls and fee RulesA1 xls as 4 i Po a located in different subdirectories of rules Here is a i RulesA2 xis amp e CategoryB fragment of the Main xls Environment table i RulesB 1 xIs _ Cate go A RulesA1 xls i 3 RulesB2 xls Categon A RulesA2 xls ae Common _ Cate JO B RulesB1 xls ibA CategoryB RulesB2_xis libRulesx xis Common libAlibRulesX xls 8 libRulesY xls Common libMlibRulesY_xls ae main 1210 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 included The reason for this is that only RulesA1 xls really cares about these files Natur
124. thod 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 OPENRULES API OpenRules provides an Application Programming Interface API 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 87 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 projects such as HelloJava DecisionHellJava HelloJsr94 and web applications such as HelloJsp HelloForms and H
125. trol tif Repositories a 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 rule 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 120 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 workbooks and rule tables Included Workbooks Rules workbooks refer to other workbooks using so called includes inside
126. ule 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 128 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual own GUI that maintains these DB based rule 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 rule templates and related software interfaces The detailed description oof external rules in provided at http openrules com pdf OpenRulesUserManual ExternalRules pdf OPENRULES PROJECTS Pre Requisites OpenRules requires the following software Java SE JDK 1 5 or higher Apache Ant 1 6 or higher MS Excel or OpenOffice or G
127. ve 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 86 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 Adding 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 me
128. ved any Java coding from rules representation allowing business analysts themselves to specify their decisions and supporting decision tables directly and completely in Excel Business users can also create business glossaries and test cases in Excel tables They may then test the accuracy of execute their decisions without the need for any coding at all 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 60 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 solving constraint satisfaction and optimization problems e Finite State Machines for event processing and connecting the dots Integration of these components with executable decisions has effectively converted OpenRules from a BRMS to a BDMS Business Decision Management System oriented to decision centric application development OpenRules Inc is a professional
129. wed 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 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 Condition Condition Conclusion Gender Marital Status Salutation Is Male Is Mr Is Female Is Married Is Mrs Is Female Is Single Is Ms 19 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 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 rules will be ignored Note OpenRules decision tables can be used to implement a methodological approach desc
130. wing rules execution logic 1 All rules are evaluated and if their conditions are satisfied they will be marked as to be executed 2 All actions columns of the types Conclusion Then Action ActionAny or Message for the to be executed rules will be executed in top down order Thus we can 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 standard DecisionTable it may look as follows DecisionTable ValidateDrivingEligibility Condition Driver s Age 7 _ Eligbe Pieter Fenda is Not Eige is Floida ts Eligible Ps Not Egle Using a non standard DecisionTablel we may present the same rule as 42 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual DecisionTable1 ValidateDrivingEligibility Condition Condition Conclusion Driver s Age Driving Eligibility SO S Ce n J J o oee C e e Foe s oe In the DecisionTable1 the first unconditional rule will set Driving Eligib
131. xcel 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 Excel Button and then Prepare plus Encrypt Document OpenRules Engine may access password protected workbooks by calling the following method just before creating an engine instance OpenRulesEngine setCurrentUserPassword password 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 setCurrentUserPassword 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 Updates 92 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual If a business rule is changed
132. xls templates for execution DecisionTableValidateTemplates xls templates for validation DecisionTableExecuteTemplates xls contains the following rule templates o DecisionTableTemplate a template for execution of the single hit tables of the type DecisionTable o DecisionTablelTemplate a template for execution of the multi hit tables of the type DecisionTablel o DecisionTable2Template a template for execution of the rule sequence tables of the type DecisionTable2 84 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual o customInitializeDecision the method that can be used for initialization of custom objects DecisionTableValidateTemplates xls contains the following rule templates o DecisionTableTemplate a template for validation of the tables of type DecisionTable against the domains defined in the glossary o customInitializeDecision the method that can be used for the initialization of custom objects Decision Templates 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 RuleSequence void DecisionTemplate Decision decision ActionPrint Log info Decision TABLE_TITLE a w name Stringname ar z Dynamic Title for Decis
133. you may write the following snippet Personalinfo pi personaliInformation He 117 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual 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 TaxR Return taxReturns 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 valid keys He or She If you enter something else for example John instead of 118 OpenRules Inc OpenRules User Manual He and save your Excel file you will receive a compile time error Index Key John not found it 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 prev

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