A business rule is the basic unit of rule processing in a Business Rule Management System (BRMS) and, as such, requires a fundamental understanding. Rules consist of a set of actions and a set of conditions whereby actions are the consequences of each condition statement being satisfied or true. With rare exception, conditions test the property values of objects taken from an object model which itself is gleaned from a Data Dictionary and UML diagrams. See my article on Data Dictionaries for a better understanding on this subject matter.

A simple rule takes the form:

if condition(s)

then actions.

An alternative form includes an else statement where alternate actions are executed in the event that the conditions in the if statement are not satisfied:

if condition(s)

then actions

else alternate_actions

It is not considered a best prectice to write rules via nested if-then-else statements as they tend to be difficult to understand, hard to maintain and even harder to extend as the depth of these statements increases; in other words, adding if statements within a then clause makes it especially hard to determine which if statement was executed when looking at a bucket of rules. Moreoever, how can we determine whether the if or the else statement was satisfied without having to read the rule itself. Rules such as these are often organized into simple rule statements and provided with a name so that when reviewing rule execution logs one can determine which rule fired and not worry about whether the if or else statement was satisfied. Another limitation of this type of rule processing is that it does not take full advantage of rule inferencing and may have a negative performance impact on the Rete engine execution. Take a class with HSG and find out why.

Rule Conditions

This section of our beginning python training class always stumps students.  Firstly, because they need to know the difference between a function and a method.  Secondly, they need to understand object oriented programming concepts.  Thirdly, they need to realize that python has three types of methods.  Then they need to know how to use each method, which means they need to know the purpose of each method type.  Then they have to understand mutable versus non-mutable types.  The list goes on.  As part of our python tutorial, I hope to shed some light on this confusing topic.

To begin, the difference between a function and a method in python is that a method is defined within a class.  Here is an illustration:

#function

	def greeting():
	                print "Hello, I hope you're having a great day!"

	class HSGPrinter(object):
	                #method
	                def greeting(self): 
	                                print "Hello, I hope you're having a great day!"

As should be obvious, the second definition of greeting is encapsulated within the HSGPrinter class and is , therefore, refered to as a method.

The astute reader will notice that the greeting method contains one parameter named self.  For those who know C++ , Java or C#, self is equivalent to this i.e. it is a reference to the invoking object:

As part of our C++ Tutorials series, here is a tutorial on the tricks of the trade for using C++ I/O.  Keep in mind that an application without I/O is just a black box; no communcation is taking place. 

Tricks and Tips for using C++ I/O

If you are interested in using java tutorials to educate yourself from home, you are probably interested in learning how to tell the difference between valuable resource materials, and those which are outdated or incorrect.  Learning to evaluate the quality of available tutorials is both an art and a science, and is best accomplished by paying attention to some of the individual components which make up a quality tutorial.  We will take a look at four of the most important:

·         Good organization – The tutorial needs to have a well-developed structure, which comprehensively details the content it will deliver, and is very easy for users to navigate.  A good organizational structure is indicative of a polished educational thought process, and is more important than you may think in the development of a good tutorial.

·         Valuable content – For good java tutorials, the content should be structured around accomplishing individual tasks.  It should do so by providing clear instruction to the reader, and be concise and to the point as well.  The delivery of quality content is the primary purpose of any tutorial.

·         Attractive appearance – Attention needs to be paid to the manner in which the tutorial is presented.  They should always strive to be visually appealing and not overly busy, so as to distract from communicating the message.  A clean and simple presentation also helps to emphasize the content.