Building the Kuali Student BRMS (Business Rules Management System) Cathy Dew & Leo Fernig Kuali Days :: Chicago May 13-14, 2008

Building the Kuali Student BRMS(Business Rules Management System)

Cathy Dew & Leo Fernig

Kuali Days :: Chicago May 13-14, 2008

2Kuali Days :: Chicago May 13-14

Agenda

1. Harvesting and Structuring Rules (Cathy) Industry Best Thinking and Practices Kuali Student Analysis

2. Setting Up the Technical BRMS Environment (Leo) KS Business Rules Environment Work to Date

3. Integrating the BRMS and SOA (Cathy) The Rule Entity Model Fitting It All Together


Getting to Functional Business Rules

RESEARCHTheory

ConceptsBest Practices

DATA COLLECTIONPartner Institutions

Focus on Learning Unit Service Modeling

Use Case Collection

Data ConceptsTerminology &

Definitions

Classification & Categorization

Strawman BRMS Strategy

Service Definitions

Actors & Scenarios

Entity Diagrams &

Message Structures


Essential Reading

Business Rules and Information Systems: Aligning IT with Business Goal -- Tony Morgan

The Business Rule Book: Classifying, Defining and Modeling Rules -- Ronald G. Ross

Business Rules Management and Service Oriented Architecture: A Pattern Language -- Ian Graham

Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML -- Jim Arlow and Ila Neustadt

Principles of the Business Rules Approach -- Ronald G. Ross

Smart (Enough) Systems -- James Taylor and Neil Raden

What Not How: The Business Rules Approach to Application Development -- C. J. Date

Business Rules Applied: Building Better Systems Using the Business Rules Approach -- Barbara von Halle


Everyone Agrees

A business rule should define what should be the case

It should not prescribe :: Who invokes the rule (use case) When the rule is executed (business

event or process description) Where the rule executes (design) How the rule is to be implemented

(design)

In fact, Kuali Student has to do all of this as part of the BRMS


Ross “RuleSpeak” Templates

A Sentence Pattern is a basic structure (Template) used to express a Rule in a consistent, well-organized manner

Every rule has a functional category :: Rejector – a constraint, any rule that disallows an event Producer – neither rejects for projects, simply computes Projector – stimulus/response rule, causes some new event

Some Rejector Rules A non-major student must have permission from instructor A pre-registration slate must not contain more than 20 credit hours A student may enroll only if the student is in good standing


Rulespeak Terminology

Establish the anchor of the rule The thing being constrained Rule must have one and only one anchor

Establish the correspondent(s) of the rule, a.k.a. facts The thing doing the constraining Rule must have at least one correspondent

With agreed upon terms and definitions, we could start to analyze business logic and discover rules.


Discovering Rules


Collecting Examples

Academic Evaluation

Admissions

Transfer Articulation

Degree Composition

Grades, GPA, etc.

Enrollment

Transfer Credit Articulation


Focus on Enrollment Rules

Description Rule Facts

General Eligibility



Course Prereq / Coreq Facts

FSU

Rule




MITRule




UBC

Rule


Patterns Start to Emerge

Count (set of courses, criteria) >= numeric value Credits Courses Subjects Unit Hours

Grade/GPA (criteria) >= numeric value Course grade GPA for term, for year, overall, within major

Student is/is not value Status is eligible, no holds, has permission Admitted to institution, college, major


Ownership vs. Execution

Ownership of rules is a function of the process (and people) responsible for authoring, maintaining and publishing a set of rules

Execution of rules is the process responsible for executing a rule may be different from the processes responsible for creating/authoring the rule.

Scheduling Rules, e.g., course has 200 seats Owned by Central Scheduling Office Created during the process of scheduling Executed during registration

The Technical BRMS Environment


KS Business Rules Environment

A Business Rules Management Service (BRMS)

A Rules Engine (Drools was selected for KS)

Business Rules User Interfaces (that allow business analysts to create and modify business rules)

Business services that execute rules Placing the rules execution inside the service that needs it.

The enrolment service would execute pre-requisite rules, degree rules etc The student financial service would execute fee calculation rules

Business Rules Data Warehouse Rules are extracted from the BRMS (using the standard BRMS service definitions)

and loaded into the data warehouse. Business Intelligence tools (such as Jasper) can be used to write reports against this data warehouse.

Workflow Business Rules that are managed in the BRMS can be moved through workflow

processes for various levels of approval, just like any other object.


Data Warehouse

Business ServiceBusiness Service

Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules

Rule Execution Engine

BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

KS Business Rules Environment

Metadata is used to produce the user’s palette to create and edit rules

Rules are created, saved and updated through the user interface

Rule data extracted to data warehouse

Get AgendaExecute Rules

Exported to executable format


Data Warehouse


Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules


BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 1

Aug – Dec 2007 Selection of Rules Engine Technology


Data Warehouse


Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules


BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 2

Jan – May 2008 1) Creation of BRMS2) BRMS_Drools

interface


Data Warehouse


Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules


BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 3

May – June 2008 Integration of BRMSand service stack


Data Warehouse


Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules


BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 4

Development of User Interfaces


A rule consists of a condition and action(s)

When

proposition 1 and proposition 2

Then

action 1

A Business Rule

Condition

Action


Example rule:

Total credits > 30 andgrade point average > 3.5

A Business Rule

Right Hand

Side

Left Hand

Side

Comparison

Operator

Boolean

Operator

Proposition


UML for a Business Rule


How do we get rules into the system?The Rules User Interface

There are 3 stereotypical ways of presenting rules:

1. A decision table

2. A flowchart

3. A procedural rule (if…then…)


Visual Stereotype #1: Decision Table

Program Visa statusCost per credit

Arts Canadian 200

Arts Student visa, Visitor 400

Science, Applied Science Canadian 300

Science, Applied Science Student visa, Visitor 600

ProgramMin credits

Max credits Visa status

Cost per credit

Arts 0 15 Canadian 50

Arts 0 15 Student visa, Visitor 100

Arts 15 30 Canadian 75

Arts 15 30 Student visa, Visitor 200

Science, Applied Science 0 30 Canadian 300

Science, Applied Science 0 30 Student visa, Visitor 400

This is not a look-up table. Not only can you change data but you can change the structure of the table without any programming changes. For example, two new columns can be added with no changes to the code:


Visual Stereotype #3: Flowchart

Apply Evaluation

Rule

Are thegrades

complete?

Is the result

a “PASS”?

Create Registration

Record

Yes

YesNo

No


Visual Stereotype #3: Procedural Rule

Pre-requisites for CHEM 415

Both courses CHEM120, CHEM130AND

ORTotal credits >12

1 course CHEM 230AND

Average >80%


Example of a User Interface


Rules and Business Intelligence

Traditionally Business Intelligence only deals with “facts” in the Enterprise Systems. Now we can apply Business Intelligence to business rules.

For example: Is there any correlation between student success and pre-requisite

rules? Which courses are referenced most frequently in curriculum rules? Are there any rules that inhibit student success (in the sense of

causing students to take more than 4 years to finish their program)?


Data Warehouse


Rules User

Interface

Drools

Executable Rules


BRMS

Rules Metadata

Rules

Business Service

How does a business services “know” which rules to invoke?

Integrating the BRMS and SOA


Rules Entity Diagram

1. Agenda Determination Structure :: information needed to determine the specific Agenda

2. Agenda :: set of Business Rules that apply to a business process needing a decision

3. Output :: for each Agenda, the expected output

4. Business Rule :: individual business rule

5. Anchor :: for each Rule, the entity type instance to which the rule is attached

6. Fact :: data (facts) needed to execute the rule

Agenda

Agenda Determination

Structure

Output

Business Rule

Fact

Anchor


Agenda Determination Decision Table

TypeRelation State

Agenda Name Agenda Description >> Rules Output

course enrolled/ registered

Student Enrolls in Course

•enrollment reqs (student, admitted, no holds) •academic reqts (min GPA, good standing) •course reqts (pre/co/anti-reqs, w/grade) •program reqts (GPA, major match) • financial reqts (enr fees paid, lui fees paid)

OK / Not OK with Explanation

course planned Student Plans Course

•course reqts (pre/co/anti-reqs, w/grade)•program reqts (GPA, major match)

Status and Recommendations


Academic Record

Example Business Rule

1. Agenda Determination :: Validate relationship of type Enroll for Course

2. Agenda :: Student Enrolls in MATH 301

3. Output :: OK / Not OK

4. Business Rule :: Student has met pre-reqs of 2 of (static list) 6 credits of (dynamic list) overall GPA >= 3.0

5. Anchor :: MATH 301

6. Facts :: course sets (static and dynamic), student’s academic record

Student Enrolls in MATH 301

Validate Relationship

Enroll in Course

OK / Not OK

Met MATH 301 Prerequisites

200-level MATH

courses

MATH 101, MATH 102, MATH 103

MATH 301


Fitting It Together KS BRMS

Harvested a bunch of rules

Developed a strategy for collecting and classifying rules

Agreed on terminology and a business rule entity model

Completed a Proof of Concept for a representative pre-requisite rule Built the Core BRMS Defined and stored a business rule Translated it to a Drools Executed the rule from our Enrollment business service


Fitting It Together KS BRMS

We are in the process of modeling :: How a business process determines which

rules to execute What is the link to the Agenda Smallest footprint possible

Who is responsible for getting the facts needed to execute the rule Without violating SOA (who knows what) Without requiring BRMS to know about domains


Thank You

Coming Soon, to a university near you...

Documents

Building the Kuali Student BRMS (Business Rules Management System) Cathy Dew & Leo Fernig Kuali Days :: Chicago May 13-14, 2008