DaveBirchall.com on Business Technology

Archive for the ‘Glossary of Technical Terms’ Category

The quickest way to get an appreciation for why Inrule is such a revolutionary bit of kit to think about business logic as a set of rules or conditions that are held in a centralised repository, (for the sake of argument) similar to the way that content is stored in a content management system. Rules are managed by non-technical business users in a collaborative, organisational fashion. Software engineers no longer need to be engaged in the management of business logic and so the business benefits both from cost saving as well as the reduced time to market to deploy the rules. The software engineer is freed to work on more challenging tasks.

In short the BRMS does for business logic what CMS does for web content (ie puts the business in control) .The company is now enabled to ‘think in rules’. This is a unified collaborative approach to the way that rules are controlled and managed within an organisation.

Such technology calls for an entirely different approach to software development, one that InRule call ‘dynamic decisioning’. In essence, Software can now be designed in such a way that business technology could be changed ahead of a change in the business environment.

For example, if a change in legislation is thought to occur which had a knock on effect on the business processes within the organisation, those changes could be written in advance, tested then activated on the passing of the legislation so that that the business transitions seamlessly.

How would your business benefit from ‘thinking in rules’?

The Rete Algorithm is a marked improvement on Sequentially organised systems. To understand the benefit you need to understand what it is not.

In a sequenial BRE, the rules are executed one at a time in a sequential order. The more rule you add, the more time is needed to work through them. Sequential Rules engines works prohibitively slowly for large or complexed implementations. The problem is further exasperated in solutions with a high amount of traffic.

Instead the Rete Algorithim is used as a way of calculating the quickest route to proceed through a ‘maze’ of rule. In simple terms, we are able to create rule about which rules to action. The obvious benefit is that the system can handle much larger amounts of data and faster and simulate business logic which is then automated.

What is a BRE?

The Business Rules Engine (BRE) is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. A BRE can be used in Business Process Automation to significantly streamline the operational efficiency in a business.

A modern BRE is best thought of a rule management system. The rules of a business can change as the business grows or evolves. Certain rules may be applicable within a certain timeframe for example and therefore Business rules need to be updated and managed with the changing needs of the business.

The BRE can be used as a vehicle to translate ‘business logic’ into information workflows.

What are Business Rules?

Rules are everywhere. In fact a good business is valued or assessed on its systems, policies and procedures. These can also be known as business rules.

Business rules are visible in all businesses from SMB to Corporate. If you are able to document and map your business rules, you stand a good chance of significantly increasing the efficiency of your business through software and automation of some of your business processes.

The following table provides examples of some of the rules that might effect decisions in various industries.

You will notice that all business rules can be summarised into two categories

Either IF – THEN statements or IF – THEN – ELSE statements

The IF – THEN statement is also known as an inference rule and can be used to look up make decisions such as ‘Should this customer be approved for a mortgage?’ by executing rules of the form “IF some-condition THEN allow-customer-a-mortgage”. They can also be used to create fact tables which may allow the system to statements such as. If the conditions are ‘wet’ and the vehicle is over 1.5 tonnes, then the maximum permitted speed is 40 kph in populated areas.

The other condition, the IF – THEN- ELSE statement is also referred to as an ‘Event Condition Action’ rule.

Modern Rules Engines can really be considered rule management systems. For instance our rules engine provides a rule authoring environment, as well as a server, testing environment and library. Effectively a library of rules can be written, reused, activated and deactivated over time.

The rules are no longer in the control of a programmer but a business analyst who can write or modify the rules in Domain Specific Language (DSL). This means that the rules are written in a language that is industry specific rather than code.

How can is it used?

Our BRE can be used as part of a customworkflow solution or a part of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in unison with Biztalk.

A interesting application for a BRE could in the automation of a help desk functionality. Where a large knowledge base exists, the BRE can be used to understand where the knowledge base is applicable through rules.

More reasons to use a BRE…

Every business is different Our rules engine is may deliver some or all of the following benefits.

·
Drastically
reduce development time and costs

o
From
5000 lines of code in C# to 150 lines of code in the BRE.

·
Significantly
reduce maintenance cost.

·
Change
business rules on the fly – less change requests and less programming!

·
Build
a faster more reactive business systems.

·
Protect
data consistency by using a BRE to handle complex calculations.

·
Remove
manual Processes where possible

·
Allocate
human resources to more humanistic tasks.

·
Free
up your overstretched IT department.

Need to know more?

If you need to know more or have any questions about how BRE can help your business, feel free to contact us.

Chances are (if you use the web) you have see the letters RSS splattered across the internet, but there is a supringly small amount of users actually using RSS. The last stat I heard said that fewer than 15% of internet users subscribed to feeds.

So if you don’t know what RSS is then your not alone and this may be your chance to do something different in your field that can make a big difference. RSS is based on XML and makes the transfer of information from one internet site to another easier.

For example, if a web page was regularly updated and you throught the information was useful, you could subscribe to the feed by clicking the RSS button. You simply need a feed reader or a piece of software with RSS built in to it… Here are some examples.

Outlook 2007

I am a new convert to Outlookand I see RSS is included as standard. This could be particularly useful if you like infomation to appear in the same environment as incoming mail and tasks.

Internet Explorer

The latest release has a RSS reader built in too. Click the star icon and find it between you favourite and your history listings

Google Reader

This is my preferred choice because I am usually signed into my account using my google apps and I can access the same feeds from any machine with out having to think too hard. As your would expect from google its free

click http://reader.google.com for more info.

So now you have a reader you just need to subscribe to the feed. There’s one at the top right corner of the page to practice on. As a worse case scenario, you may need to copy and paste the URL into your chosen reader.

Get it? Good!

So what can RSS do for your business?

Well think of it like this. If people can subscribe to your site you have the power to broadcast the content of your site immeasurably. Your content can form part of other peoples blogs, social networks and mash ups across the webiverse!

Remember the case of Corey the party goer who’s party got out of control? RSS feeds broadcast his invitation many times over without him knowing. If he were an online marketer he would be heralded a genius! So if you can master RSS your can reach a new audience in ways you never thought possible.

Not only that but as RSS becomes more popular you can appeal to an ‘opt in’ audience where email has become tired and less effective.

Enjoy!

Microsoft SilverLight is a new means to display rich media over the web. Perhaps you have been asked to install flash player when you have gone to you tube or something similar?

MS Silverlight is simply Microsoft’s offering but fits in neatly with all of the benefits of the .NET / asp framework. It claims to be work across Mac and PC and all mainstream web browsers. One of the coolest things from a business perspective is how easy it is to add video to your corporate website with DVD like controls chapter points. The web is continuing to move away from its humble beginning of static content and technolgies such as these may well be a catalyst.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEUrQEj6Sd4