Business Rules and Information Systems

Aligning IT with Business Goals

Tony Morgan

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 2002 , 385 pages

ISBN: 0-201-74391-4

Synopsis:

Toggle Synopsis

Information systems often fail because their requirements are poorly defined. This book shows IT professionals how to specify more precisely and more effectively what their systems need to do. The key lies in the discovery and application of what are called business rules. A business rule is a compact and simple statement that represents some important aspect of a business. By capturing the rules for your business — the logic that governs its operation — you will gain the ability to create systems fully aligned with your business needs.

In this book, Tony Morgan provides a thorough introduction to business rules, as well as a practical framework for integrating them into information systems. He shows you how to identify and express business rules, offers practical strategies for their use, and explains the key elements of logic that underpin their application.

Topics covered include:

• Understanding the role of business rules and models in information systems development
• Using models to structure and manage business activities, including e-commerce
• Defining and discovering business rules
• Controlling business rule quality
• Fitting business rules into varied technical architectures
• Implementing business rules using available technology

Whether you are an analyst, designer, developer, or technical manager, the in-depth information and practical perspective in this valuable resource will guide you in your efforts to build rule-centered information systems that fully support the goals of your organization.

Table of Contents:

Toggle Table of Contents

• List of Figures
• Preface
• Why this book
• The goals of this book
• Who should read this book
• How to use this book
• Acknowledgments
• Part I A New Approach to Information Systems
• Chapter 1 The Problem
• Section 1.1 What this book is about
• Section 1.2 The way we build software
• Section 1.3 The vision
• Section 1.4 Is this really practical?
• Section 1.5 Moving forward
• Section 1.6 Where we stand
• Chapter 2 Frameworks, Architectures, and Models
• Section 2.1 Needful abstractions
• Section 2.2 Case study: a sample business architecture
• Section 2.3 What does a complete model look like?
• Section 2.4 Modeling summary
• Part II Capturing Business Rules
• Chapter 3 Defining Business Rules
• Section 3.1 Rule statements
• Section 3.2 Forming rule statements
• Section 3.3 References to facts
• Section 3.4 Business parameters
• Section 3.5 Tips on rule construction
• Section 3.6 Case Study: Microsoft Outlook
• Section 3.7 Rule description summary
• Chapter 4 Discovering Business Rules
• Section 4.1 That which we call a rule
• Section 4.2 Where rules come from
• Section 4.3 Finding rules
• Section 4.4 Case study: loan approval
• Section 4.5 Rule-discovery summary
• Chapter 5 Controlling Rule Quality
• Section 5.1 Developing quality rules
• Section 5.2 Reviewing rules
• Section 5.3 Walkthroughs
• Section 5.4 Inspections
• Section 5.5 Testing
• Section 5.6 Case study: testing the VBB loan-application rules
• Section 5.7 Metrics
• Section 5.8 Quality summary
• Part III Implementing Business Rules
• Chapter 6 The Technology Environment
• Section 6.1 More about architecture
• Section 6.2 A typical reference architecture
• Section 6.3 Component architecture
• Section 6.4 Transactions
• Section 6.5 Server pages and scripting
• Section 6.6 State management
• Section 6.7 Implications for business rules
• Section 6.8 Where rules live
• Section 6.9 Summarizing the technology environment
• Chapter 7 Realizing Business Rules
• Section 7.1 Taking stock
• Section 7.2 Distributing rules
• Section 7.3 Realizing rules
• Section 7.4 System rules
• Section 7.5 Implementation summary
• Chapter 8 Managing Business Rules and Models
• Section 8.1 Life-cycle costs
• Section 8.2 Managing evolution
• Section 8.3 Deploying rules
• Section 8.4 Tools to support rule management
• Section 8.5 Rule repository
• Section 8.6 Rule management summary
• Part IV The Role of Business Rules
• Chapter 9 A Wider View
• Section 9.1 Marshaling intellectual resources
• Section 9.2 Capturing knowledge
• Section 9.3 Knowledge summary
• Chapter 10 Summing Up
• Section 10.1 The purpose of this book
• Section 10.2 Models
• Section 10.3 Trends
• Section 10.4 Business rule characteristics
• Section 10.5 Rule populations
• Section 10.6 Other properties
• Section 10.7 Rule programming
• Section 10.8 Advantages of business rules
• Appendix A Little Bit of Logic
• Section A.1 Business Logic
• Section A.2 Propositions
• Section A.3 Logical operations
• Section A.4 Handling logical values
• Section A.5 Final words
• Selected Bibliography