Graphical Rule Editor for RuleML format

In the last few weeks we have created the RuleML adapter for the Rule Manager. The RuleML adapter allows to export a business rules policy to the Reaction RuleML format.

Please bear with us that we are no experts in RuleML and certain rule constructions might be exported incorrectly. I hope the RuleML community can provide us with the feedback and we will incorporate any changes into our automatic update process as soon as possible. You can give feedback at the http://www.acumenbusiness.com/support forum.

Installation:
The Rule Manager product is available from the website http://www.acumenbusiness.com/

You can export to the RuleML format by installing the RuleML adapter module. See the screenshot [Menu: File\Options\Adapters\Rule ML]

The adapter will provide the new export format "RuleML (*.rrml)" in the Export wizard. [Menu: File\Export]
You can set .rrml as the default export type by changing the File Export type on the Import & Export options
[Menu: File\Options\Import & Export\File Export = RuleML (*.rrml)]

An example of the Driver Eligibility export is here

WebCast on Advanced Scenarios of WFRules

Kavita (Microsoft) will give a presentation this Friday (7/6/2007) about some advanced scenarios using rules with Windows Workflow Foundation.

During this presentation you will see screenshots of Acumen Business Rule Manager as an example of an advanced Business Rules solution!

The Rule Manager provides the additional functionality of Rule Authoring, Rule Repository Rule Verification & Validation. Only by empowering the business users with a complete business rules tool set, you will achieve a truly agile business policy that becomes transparent within your organization.

Here are the details of the Live Webcast:

Event Name: Webcast: Introduction to Windows Workflow Foundation Rules - Part II

Start Date: 7/6/07
Start Time: 1:30 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
End Time: 3:00 PM (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Audio conferencing: +1 (866) 500-6738
Participant code: 7545634
Presenter code: 9070863

Click on this link for more information regarding this Webcast

A Test suite for business rules

I mentioned in a previous posts that the rule validation in the interactive rule map (cause-effect graph between terms and rules) is part one of the rule validation.

In the image on the right (click to zoom) you see the second part that is currently being developed. Test cases that are created in the interactive rule map can be saved to a test suite. A test suite (a collection of test cases for business rules) can be executed in a batch process.

For every test record we compare the user defined expected value with the rules engine computed value. Any discrepancies are flagged with a red info, and the test record would be marked red to indicate a failure. Green test records have all computed values equal to the business users defined expected values.

In the output terms you have to indicate which term you want to set as a goal for the rules engine. One test suite can process multiple goals. But every test record can only have one goal defined.

Similar to the meta information on a business rule, a test record contains the meta information of who the author is, when it was created, a description field etc.

You can imagine that among business users a difference of opinion might exists what the expected outcome value must be for a particular situation. We can not say what is right or wrong withing a rule policy, but we can show there is a difference.

Finally, the test suite can be used perfectly for regression testing your rule policy and can give a good impact analysis what happens when you modify your rule policy.

Microsoft XPS format

During a web demonstration of the Rule Manager I had to go for a full OS reboot. Not very pretty for a product demonstration. What happened? Not really sure, but it seems that the latest version of Adobe Acrobat (8.1.0) started to lock the generated Rule PDF report.

Few days later I started to get the forced updates from Adobe. Considering I have many VM installations to test all different platforms and configurations, you can imagine I'm not too happy with these forced downloads.

Finally the free PDF viewer started to contain advertisement to FedEx. These 'convenient' link buttons are always a big annoyance to me.

It was time to provide an alternative to the PDF format. The latest release of the Rule Manager (1.5.0.17) supports now the Microsoft XPS as an alternative.

The good part of this is that an XPS viewer comes pre-installed on Microsoft Vista. I'm not really sure if it is part of .NET 3.0 framework, but on my XP SP2 box I could use the XPS viewer as well.

Currently the Adobe PDF format is still the default report format, but you can easily change that (and we will store your preferences in your user settings)

The main shortcoming I currently see with the XPS viewer is that you can not rotate a page.

Here are the results:
XPS: http://www.acumenbusiness.com/portals/Loan%20Mortgage%20Approval.xps
PDF: http://www.acumenbusiness.com/portals/Loan%20Mortgage%20Approval.pdf

Rule Manager 1.5.0.x is released

The new Rule Manager (1.5.0.x) is released! There are many new features and enhancements. Here are some of the highlights:

• Rule Validation; in the interactive rule map you can let the rules engine resolve any term.
  This starts an animated goal seeking process. The default waiting time is 0.5 sec. You can change this in the debug options.
• Panning and zooming of the interactive rule map.
• Creation of business rules and business terms are completely accessible during the trial period.
• Export your rule policy to Windows Workflow Foundation, and you see the rules executing on top of Microsoft's Forward chaining rules engine. By default the rule tracing is on. You can see the rule execution in the output console of Visual Studio.

Existing users can follow the internal update wizard (except that you need the .NET Framework 3.0)

New users can start the installation wizard that is available here.

Rule Validation Video

The Rule Manager will soon be enhanced with a new feature that allows the Interactive Rule Map as a Rule Debugger. See a video here: Rule Validation Video. It almost became an action movie :).

This is part one of providing Rule Validation (that is: testing your rules) with the Rule Manager.


Color legend for Rule:

• Green: Rule fired
• Red: Rule failed
• Orange: Rule is pending

Color legend for Term:

• Green: Term is assigned
• Orange: Term is unknown
  
  

How it works? We use the backward chaining algorithm to resolve a goal. The user can select any business term as a goal.

• When the user clicks resolve, the inference engine will try to resolve this goal by executing the rules.
• When a term is encountered that can not be derived from other rules, an ask dialog will be shown to the user. The user value will be stored into an internal table, so consecutive runs will first use this table before asking the user. Internally the rule manager supports defining restrictions on business terms. This allows the inference engine to show input options when asking a value for a term.

About the user data value table:

• The table can be cleared by clicking on 'Reset All Values' from the context menu.
• You can change the value of one particular term by selecting the 'Reset Term' on the Term context menu.
• Note: also business terms that are inferred by the inference engine can be overwritten by the user. Be careful with this because this would skip the backward-chaining of this rule branch.