Business Rule - Real World Applications and Obstacles

Real World Applications and Obstacles

Business rules are gathered in these situations:

1. When dictated by law
2. During the business analysis
3. As an ephemeral aid to engineers.

This lack of consistent approach is mostly due to the cost and effort required to maintain the list of rules. The cost of maintaining the list increases in situations where the rules are rapidly changing, such as in a start-up company. Another common obstacle to the adoption of formal business rule management is resistance from employees who understand that their knowledge of business rules is key to their employment.

Because technologies require and enforce consistency in their use, technology is often used to address these issues. As a result, there has been substantial investment in tools to perform business rules management and rules execution. Software tools such as Wolf Frameworks are an example of this trend.

Note that many tools make a distinction between Business Rules Engines and Business Rules Management, and require a translation between the two. Commercially available tools now also offer the possibility to combine both management and execution of rules. Combined with an easy to use interface and a proper notation which can be maintained by business users, customers of these tools hope to reduce or eliminate the obstacles mentioned above.

While newer software tools are able to combine business rule management and execution, it is important to realize that these two ideas are distinct, and each provides value that is different from the other. Software packages automate business rules using business logic. The term business rule is sometimes used interchangeably with business logic; however the latter connotes an engineering practice and the former an intrinsic business practice. There is value in outlining an organization's business rules regardless of whether this information is used to automate its operations.

One of the pitfalls in trying to fill the gap between rules management and execution is trying to give business rules the syntax of logic, and merely describing logical constructs in a natural language. Translation for engines is easier, but business users will no longer be able to write down the rules.