KS BusinessRulesSOAD

7/28/2019 KS BusinessRulesSOAD

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Building the Kuali Student BRMS

(Business Rules Management System)

Cathy Dew & Leo Fernig

Kuali Days :: Chicago

May 13-14, 2008


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Kuali Days :: Chicago May 13-14 2

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


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Getting to Functional Business Rules

RESEARCHTheory

Concepts

Best 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


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Essential Reading

Business Rules and Information Systems: Aligning ITwith Business Goal -- Tony Morgan

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

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

Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building BetterSoftware 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 toApplication Development -- C. J. Date

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


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Everyone Agrees

A business rule should define whatshould be the case

It should not prescribe :: Whoinvokes the rule (use case)

Whenthe rule is executed (businessevent or process description)

Wherethe rule executes (design)

Howthe rule is to be implemented(design)

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


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Ross RuleSpeak Templates

A Sentence Patternis 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 musthave permission from instructor

A pre-registration slate must no tcontain more than 20 credit hours

A student mayenroll only i fthe student is in good standing


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Rulespeak Terminology

Establish the anchorof 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/isnot value

Status is eligible, no holds, has permission

Admitted to institution, college, major



Ownership vs. Execution

Ownershipof rules is a function of the process (and

people) responsible for authoring, maintaining and

publishing a set of rules

Execut ionof 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 Ownedby Central Scheduling Office

Createdduring the process of scheduling

Executedduring registration


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The Technical BRMS Environment



KS Business Rules Environment

A Business Rules Management Service (BRMS)

A Rules Engine (Droolswas selected for KS)

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

Bu siness s ervices 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.

Workf low

Business Rules that are managed in the BRMS can be moved through workflowprocesses for various levels of approval, just like any other object.



Data Warehouse

Business Service

Business 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

users 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

Business Service

Business Service

Rules

User

Interface

Drools

Executable

Rules

Rule

Execution

Engine

BRMS

Rules

Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 1

AugDec 2007Selection of Rules

Engine Technology



Data Warehouse

Business Service

Business Service

Rules

User

Interface

Drools

Executable

Rules

Rule

Execution

Engine

BRMS

Rules

Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 2

Jan May 20081) Creation of BRMS

2) BRMS_Drools

interface



Data Warehouse

Business Service

Business Service

Rules

User

Interface

Drools

Executable

Rules

Rule

Execution

Engine

BRMS

Rules

Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 3

May June 2008

Integration of BRMS

and service stack



Data Warehouse

Business Service

Business Service

Rules

User

Interface

Drools

Executable

Rules

Rule

Execution

Engine

BRMS

Rules

Metadata

Rules

Business Service

Phase 4

Development of

User Interfaces



A rule consists of a condi t ionand action(s)

When

proposition 1 and

proposition 2Then

action 1

A Business Rule

Condition

Action



Example rule:

Total credits > 30 and

grade point average > 3.5

A Business Rule

Right Hand

Side

Left Hand

Side

Comparison

Operator

Boolean

Operator

Proposition


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UML for a Business Rule


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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 (ifthen)


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Visual Stereotype #1: Decision Table

Program Visa status Cost percredit

Arts Canadian 200

Arts Student visa, Visitor 400

Science, Applied Science Canadian 300

Science, Applied Science Student visa, Visitor 600

Program

Min

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 no ta look-up table. Not only can you change data but you can change thestructure of the table without any p rogramm ingchanges. For example, two

new columns can be added with no changes to the code:


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Visual Stereotype #3: Flowchart

Apply

Evaluation

Rule

Are the

grades

complete

?

Is the

result

a

PASS?

Create

Registration

Record

Yes

YesNo

No


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Example of a User Interface


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Rules and Business Intelligence

Traditionally Business Intelligence only deals with facts inthe 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)?


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Data Warehouse

Business Service

Business Service

Rules

User

Interface

Drools

Executable

Rules

Rule

Execution

Engine

BRMS

Rules

Metadata

Rules

Business Service

How does a business services know

which rules to invoke?


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Integrating the BRMS and SOA


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Agenda Determination Decision Table

TypeRelationState

AgendaName 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

Recommend

ations


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Academic

Record

Example Business Rule

1. Agenda Determinat ion::Validate relationship of typeEnroll for Course

2. A genda :: Student Enrolls inMATH 301

3. Ou tp ut :: OK / Not OK4. Bus iness Ru le:: Student

has met pre-reqs of 2 of (static list)

6 credits of (dynamic list)

overall GPA >= 3.0

5. Anchor :: MATH 301

6. Fac ts :: course sets (staticand dynamic), studentsacademic record

Student Enrolls

in MATH 301

ValidateRelationship

Enroll in Course

OK / Not

OK

Met MATH 301

Prerequisites

200-level

MATH

courses

MATH 101,

MATH 102,

MATH 103

MATH

301


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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


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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


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Thank You

Coming Soon, to a university near you...

Documents

KS BusinessRulesSOAD