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Business Rules Evangelist: The Normalized Foundation of Business Rules Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics editorial from DMReview: "Business Rules Evangelist: The Normalized Foundation of Business Rules Column published in DMReview.com January 30, 2004 By Malcolm Chisholm .....Ideally, the possibility of using business rules approaches should be a driver for always creating as good a logical database design as possible. Such a design represents how the business sees its data and needs to change only as the business changes. If such designs are physically implemented, then business rules projects are bound to be made easier. For existing databases there is a need to understand the difference between the logical design that represents how the enterprise sees its data and the physical design that is actually implemented. In addition, understanding the set of application logic that navigates around the denormalized design is required. This may not be an easy answer, but knowing what needs to be done from the start is far better than embarking on a business rules project only to get bogged down later on. "

.......................
The Business Rules Community's
Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update
February, 2004 Vol 5 No. 2
.......................
In this issue of your periodic Business Rules Journal Update...
1. Categories and Roles in Business Vocabulary, by Donald E. Baisley
2. Premise & Conclusion: Tracing the Path of Rule Reduction, by Ronald G. Ross
3. Modeling Concepts: Verbalizing Business Rules (part 5), by Terry Halpin
4. BRG Dispatches: The Complete Business Rules Manifesto, by the Business Rules Group (BRG) [Ronald G. Ross]
5. OMG Report: OMG Report: Initial OMG Business Rules Proposals Are In, by Stan Hendryx
6. Technology Review: Quality by Design: Using Decision Tables in Business Rules, by Jan Vanthienen
If you'd like to read all our articles on the web, visit:
http://www.brcommunity.com/

1. Categories and Roles in Business Vocabulary,
by Donald E. Baisley
...............................................................
Business vocabularies include terms used by business people for such activities as stating business policy. Many terms represent categories of things or roles that things play. In this month's feature, Donald Baisley discusses 'categories' and 'roles' with regard to definition, meaning, and practical use.
The distinction between categories and roles is important when defining terms in a business vocabulary or when using them to write business rules.nts to check whether a set of rules is onsistent, complete, and accurate (non-redundant). The practitioner will have a need for very precise explanations and elaborations from the business experts. These explanations will lead to better understanding of the rules and their interdependencies. In many cases this process already gives rise to questioning the quality of the rules. So even before the actual verification of the rules has started, the quality and understanding of the organization's business rules will improve. Note that a business expert can also be a business rule practitioner. In fact, this is one of the goals of the business rules approach: The business expert is the ultimate manager of the rules.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b177.html

2. Premise & Conclusion: Tracing the Path of Rule Reduction,
by Ronald G. Ross
...............................................................
How do business rules relate to policies, laws, and regulations?
What needs to be done to reduce high-level business logic to automatable form? Are there recognizable way-stations along the path of rule reduction? In this month's column, Ron Ross takes a look at these and related issues.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b156.html

3. Modeling Concepts: Verbalizing Business Rules (part 5),
by Terry Halpin
...............................................................
In this month's column, Terry Halpin discusses further aspects of verbalizing mandatory constraints. In particular, it considers verbalization of mandatory constraints on roles of n-ary associations, and disjunctive mandatory constraints (also known as inclusive-or constraints) over sets of roles. This is the fifth in a series of articles on expressing business rules formally in a high-level, textual language.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b179.html

4. BRG Dispatches: The Complete Business Rules Manifesto,
by the Business Rules Group (BRG) [Ronald G. Ross] ...............................................................
The complete version of the 'Business Rules Manifesto' was launched in November 2003 at the Business Rules Forum Conference, Nashville, TN. In this month's 'BRG Dispatches' column, Ron Ross discusses this important update and lets members of the Business Rules Community know how to get a copy.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b178.html

5. OMG Report: Initial OMG Business Rules Proposals Are In,
by Stan Hendryx
...............................................................
In this month's column, Stan Hendryx provides an update on activities of the OMG Business Rules SIG. The SIG met in Nashville in November immediately following the Business Rules Forum. "It has been interesting to see the maturation of the business rules approach in progress," he observes.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b180.html

6. Technology Review: Quality by Design: Using Decision
Tables in Business Rules, by Jan Vanthienen ..................................................................
Decision tables have been around for a long time. In this edition of Technology Review, Jan Vanthienen of Katholieke Universiteit Leuven shows us their value in repesenting and validating business rules. Although they are not in themselves a technology, decision tables are an important feature of many business rules products.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/n008.html
============================================================
The Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update is distributed electronically free-of-charge on a monthly basis by the Business Rules Community. http://www.blogger.com/www.BRCommunity.com
Gladys S. W. Lam, Publisher
Ronald G. Ross, Executive Editor
Keri Anderson Healy, Editor
John Hall, Technology Editor
BRCommunity.com is sponsored by Business Rule Solutions, LLC, the world leader in business rule techniques.
Copyright 2004. http://www.blogger.com/www.BRSolutions.com. All rights reserved.

Why is 'Business Logic' an oxymoron?: "by Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink, LLC
Dear executive: quick! Where is your business logic? In the business or application tier of your n-tier architecture? Ingrained in your business and enterprise applications? How about stored procedures in your databases? You wouldn't have any business logic in your client apps, portals, or Web pages, would you? How about your identity and access management software? What's that you say? All of the above? The fact of the matter is, for most large organizations (and many midsize ones, as well), business logic resides in all of these places, and more. Where it doesn't reside is in the hands of the business people. And there's the contradiction: how can business logic be business logic if it's locked away in the technology, rather than in the hands of the business? "

ILOG Reports 2004 Second Quarter Results; Growth and Profitability in the U.S., Weakness in Europe Company Announces New CFO, Other Management Changes: "ILOG's largest contract in the quarter - a JRules and JViews agreement with a major healthcare provider in the U.S. - indicated the broad applicability of ILOG products outside its core industries. Purchases by the financial services, insurance, and manufacturing sectors contributed over a third of this quarter's revenue.

"I am particularly encouraged by our customers' achievements in calendar year 2003. Some of the most demanding applications in the world can now be updated in real time thanks to our JRules product, proving that business rules can benefit all applications. Some key customers have also successfully deployed advanced systems combining a rules front-end and a CPLEX execution engine, demonstrating ILOG's technology edge, " added Haren.

"

: "EBAY uses ILOG Business Rule Management System to enhance user experience


SAN JOSE, Calif. -- January 22, 2003 -- ILOG(R) (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364), a leading provider of enterprise-class software components and services, today announced that eBay, The World's Online Marketplace(R), is using ILOG JRules(tm), a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, to enhance marketing promotions, among other applications, and improve business response time across eBay's product categories, creating an even better user experience, while improving time-to-market of eBay's products and services. "

ViewPoints - Sept 2003 blaze: "Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor adds prediction to rules management

The new version of Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor, set to roll out at the end of 2003, integrates the capabilities of Fair Isaac Blaze Decision System to give our clients unprecedented capabilities for quickly implementing powerful decision-making strategies across the customer lifecycle.
'Up to now, Blaze Advisor has functioned as a pure rules technology, with great flexibility to change business rules instantly,' says James Taylor, director of product marketing for Analytic Software Tools. 'Now, with the integration of the scoring capabilities of Blaze Decision System, it will also function as a powerful platform for deploying predictions and making business decisions based on those predictions.'"

ViewPoints - May 2002 Kemper: "Kemper Insurance automates underwriting, improves combined ratio

Less than a year after Kemper Insurance's Individual and Family Group (IFG) implemented Fair, Isaac Insurance Decision System� (IDS) software, the results are in.
The combined ratio improved by eight points. Along with other technology improvement initiatives, IDS is credited with helping IFG become a more efficient underwriting organization, says Patrick Madigan, national underwriting manager. "

Nov 2003 facttrack: "Blaze Advisor integration with Siebel Business Integration Applications delivers enhanced services

Fair Isaac announced at October's Siebel User Week 2003 that Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor has been successfully validated with Universal Application Network (UAN). Siebel Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEBL) is a leading provider of multi-channel business applications software. The validation of Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor with UAN allows users to deliver enhanced service by building on the combined strength of Siebel Systems' market-leading applications and Fair Isaac's leading business rules platform for automating decision making. Blaze Advisor rule services can now be invoked by Siebel Business Integration Applications for Insurance, receive data in a standards-based format from systems integrated through UAN, and execute the rule service with all of the power and flexibility inherent in modern rules management technology. Decisions are returned to applications users in any channel in seconds.
'The combination of our decision-making technology with Siebel Business Integration Applications gives organizations tremendous flexibility in how they manage their business processes,' said Jeff Kilbreth, vice president of rules technology at Fair Isaac. 'They can now make decisions and improve personalization using data pulled from any database, while leveraging all of the strengths of customer-centric Siebel applications. These two technologies can be combined to provide a new standard in customer service and consistency between the call center and the Internet.'"

Nov 2003: "'About Thinking:
A Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence'

A live recording, presented by Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen


Hear Dr. Hecht-Nielsen, vice president of R&D at Fair Isaac and co-founder of HNC, discuss his recently published theory of how thinking is carried out � and its startling implications for artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and business applications.

Not only does this theory explain how we can now move forward to build artificial intelligence, but it also clearly explains why past attempts have failed.

This popular talk was first presented at InterACT 2003. In this hour-long streaming audio, accompanied by slides, you can listen to the entire talk, or click through any part of it.

Play the presentation"

IBM and Fair Isaac Partner to Deliver Analytic Advantage: "IBM and Fair Isaac Partner to Deliver Analytic Advantage to Financial Institutions Worldwide

IBM and Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC) announced today that the companies have formed a global strategic alliance to help financial services providers worldwide manage risk, prevent fraud and forge customer relationships more profitably. The relationship will focus on delivering the full range of Fair Isaac's advanced analytic software and tools through IBM's established technology infrastructure at the world's top financial institutions.

Through this alliance, IBM is now a global reseller of Fair Isaac's core analytic capabilities for financial services providers. Banks and lenders worldwide can now easily and effectively tap into Fair Isaac's proven, standard-setting predictive analytics and decision technologies, which have been optimized for IBM's On Demand operating environment. The joint initiative is a direct outgrowth of IBM's increased focus on delivering best-in-class software and tools to meet the needs and requirements of specific industries.

....Through the alliance, financial institutions will be able to implement true EDM with tools that help them design, deploy, automate and manage optimal decisions across the entire organization. Key components of the EDM product suite include Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor, the leading software for creating and deploying business rules as part of an automated business system, and Fair Isaac Blaze Decision System, which applies rules and various decision-making criteria to help businesses make real-time decisions that reflect their business priorities. IBM has been offering and delivering Blaze Advisor to customers via its Websphere platform since 2001......"

SOFTBANK Group's 'Yahoo! BB' Adopts ILOG BRMS to Streamline, Simplify New Billing System : "
ILOG JRules-based System Expected To Reduce Time-To-Market by 50 Percent

TOKYO, Jan. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ILOG(R) (Nasdaq: ILOG;
Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364), a leading provider of enterprise-class
software components and services, today announced that SOFTBANK BB has
selected ILOG JRules(TM), a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management
System (BRMS) product line, to help streamline a new billing system for its
comprehensive broadband service, Yahoo! BB. SOFTBANK BB selected ILOG JRules
to help simplify the management of the highly complex billing system
because of its ability to directly involve non-IT users in the creation and
maintenance of rules, a capability the company expects will reduce
time-to-market by 50 percent."

Introduction to Web Services: "Introduction to Web Services
By Lakshmi Ananthamurthy

With all this sudden awareness about the terms Web Services and ebXML, everyone is bound to get curious and want to know what all this noise is about. Well, we hope that this series of articles, starting from today, and appearing once every fortnight, should clear the curious minds, and put you on a strong footing to tackle the mysterious Web Services with great ease and understanding."

Leading Java Vendors Announce The Java Tool Community: "Leading Java Vendors Announce The Java Tool Community
By Rosemarie Graham

Tuesday, ten of the leading Java vendors announced the creation of The Java Tool Community. The founding members making the announcement were BEA Systems, Compuware, Embarcadero Technologies, Iopsis Software, JetBrains, Oracle Corp., Quest Software, SAP AG, SAS and Sun Microsystems. This group is hoping that other vendors, developers, and users join the community. Participation is open and can be done at various levels.
The goal of this group is to promote 'toolability' among the Java Community. Toolability is a measurement of how easy it is to build tools around a particular standard or technology. "

Term of the Week: Service Oriented Architecture: "Term of the Week: Service Oriented Architecture
By Jim Minatel

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) was one of the emerging buzz-phrases of 2003. This article provides you with a quick look at the principles behind SOA and the benefits it gives you so you can begin an analysis of whether or not SOA is in your future."

BRCommunity: December 2003 & January 2004 Business Rules Journal Update: "
The Business Rules Community's
Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update
December, 2003 Vol. 4 No.12, January, 2004 Vol 5 No. 1 .......................

In this issue of your periodic Business Rules Journal Update...

1. Verification of Business Rules Utilization, by Rik Gerrits

2. ASL -- A Formal Language For Specifying A Complete Logical
System Model (Zachman Row3) Including Business Rules, by David
Bevington

3. Premise and Conclusion: Do Rules Decompose to Processes or
Vice Versa?, by Ronald G. Ross

4. Foundation Matters: Business Rules and Logic ~ What Exactly
Is a Business Rule?, by C. J. Date

5. OMG Report: OMG Issues Business Rules RFPs ~ an Update from
Nashville, by Stan Hendryx

6. "Oldies-but-Goodies" posting, by Ronald G. Ross

If you'd like to read all our articles on the web, visit:
http://www.brcommunity.com

1. Verification of Business Rules Utilization, By Rik Gerrits ...............................................................
In this month's feature, Rik Gerrits reflects on the interaction between a business rule practitioner and a business expert when the practitioner wants to check whether a set of rules is consistent, complete, and accurate (non-redundant). The practitioner will have a need for very precise explanations and elaborations from the business experts. These explanations will lead to better understanding of the rules and their interdependencies. In many cases this process already gives rise to questioning the quality of the rules. So even before the actual verification of the rules has started, the quality and understanding of the organization's business rules will improve.
Note that a business expert can also be a business rule practitioner. In fact, this is one of the goals of the business rules approach: The business expert is the ultimate manager of the rules.

to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2003/b175.html

2. ASL -- A Formal Language For Specifying A Complete Logical
System Model (Zachman Row 3) Including Business Rules, by
David Bevington
...............................................................
If business rules are to be implemented as part of an IT system then they need to be transformed from the business-oriented specification used in business analysis (Zachman row 2), into a form appropriate for a logical system model (Zachman row 3), and on finally to a directly-executable form in a particular software product. ASL is a new language that enables the specification of a complete integrated logical system model including the business rules.

to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2004/b167.html
3. Premise and Conclusion: Do Rules Decompose to Processes or
Vice Versa? by Ronald G. Ross
...............................................................
This month's column examines the relationship between processes and rules -- focusing in particular on the question of whether rules can be decomposed into processes. What would such decomposition mean in the real world? What implications are there for models of real-world things? The answers to these questions may surprise you

to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2003/b155.html


4. Foundation Matters: Business Rules and Logic ~ What Exactly
Is a Business Rule?, by C. J. Date
...............................................................
In this month's column on 'business rules and logic,' C. J. Date writes, "I recently received a communication from an old friend (I'll call him George), 'soliciting opinions' on a matter to do with logic and business rules. After I'd responded, I realized that the whole exchange could possibly be of interest to a wider audience, and so I worked it up into the present technical note."

to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2003/b170.html


5. OMG Report: OMG Issues Business Rules RFPs ~ an Update from
Nashville, by Stan Hendryx
...............................................................
In this month's column, Stan Hendryx provides an update on activities of the OMG Business Rules SIG. The SIG met in Nashville in November immediately following the Business Rules Forum. "It has been interesting to see the maturation of the business rules approach in progress," he observes.

to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2003/b176.html

6. "Oldies-but-Goodies" Collection
..................................................................
BRS is releasing hidden treasures from past print issues of the DataToKnowledge Newsletter (formerly Data Base Newsletter).
This month's posting to our "Oldies-but-Goodies"
collection is...

"Business Rules: Knowledge for Knowledge Workers"
by Ronald G. Ross
from the Nov./Dec. 1995 issue

to read, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a1995/a504.html
"

Re-energizing COBOL with Java- ADTmag.com: "Re-energizing COBOL with Java
3/1/2002
By Richard Adhikari
Finally, according to Murphy, there is the invasive approach, where a developer goes into the COBOL code and, using software that identifies business rules, takes out the conditional logic from these as the business rules, wrappers them and invokes them -- "going well beyond recompile."

Dale Vecchio, research director for application development at Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn., has a different take on the methodologies. For him, there are three approaches. One is more development-centered; the second is using an adapter or connector; and the third is using XML, an approach that will "soon be superseded" by Web services, he said.

"

Cobol lives on via BluePhoenix, Cook Systems- ADTmag.com: "Cobol lives on via BluePhoenix, Cook Systems
1/5/2004

COBOL lives on via BluePhoenix, Cook Systems ADT Magazine ... Gentry said the product does more than simply parse old Cobol -- it derives business rules from existing code through a process that is largely, but not ..."

Business Rules Evangelist: The Case for Business Rules Business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics editorial from DMReview: "Business Rules Evangelist:
The Case for Business Rules


Column published in DMReview.com
January 2, 2004

By Malcolm Chisholm

....The case for business rules is more about doing things that are completely new than about increasing efficiency. Management of complexity and the "un-black-boxing" of applications may not be mentioned very often, but they are very likely to play important roles in the future of the business rules’ movement. The movement may still be in its early years, but it is not hype. In fact, as we will see in future columns in this space, its roots are deeper today than most people realize. Organizations in general, and IT professionals in particular, cannot afford to ignore it, even if it seems that there is not very much that is actionable today. The future will be different.

"

Partners offer way to manage COBOL
: " 'Spaghetti code' hampers system
By Mark Watson
Contact
December 6, 2003

The result is COBOL Regeneration, which uses tools from BluePhoenix to separate out particular meaningful bits of code, known as business rules.

"

Pegasystems Helps Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island Achieve Superior Customer Satisfaction with New Contact Center Solution: "CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 2003--
Rapid Deployment of PegaHEALTH Member Services Application Provides BCBSRI With Improved Service Quality and Increased Productivity

... Built on Pegasystems' patented business rules engine, PegaHEALTH solutions enable users to change processes quickly and easily and respond with agility to ... "

Update: Microsoft BizTalk 2004 To Add Rules Engine, No Price Hike : 11:49 AM EST Wed., Dec. 17, 2003: "Update: BizTalk 2004 To Add Rules Engine, No Price Hike

By Barbara Darrow, CRN

11:49 AM EST Wed., Dec. 17, 2003

BizTalk 2004's new rules engine will let integrators set up systems that will trigger alerts when they hit a certain condition.

"You can engineer a really rich environment based on business rules in conjunction with orchestration," said Eron Kelly, lead product manager for Microsoft's e-business servers group. "If this event happens, it kicks off an alert. It's particularly great for the financial services industry."

"

Start-up rethinks business rules software- ADTmag.com: "Start-up rethinks business rules software
12/17/2003
By Rich Seeley


Why can't business rules software work more like a spreadsheet?
That was the question Corticon Technologies Inc. asked itself three years ago when it set out to design a different kind of business rules platform, said Eric Kintzer, vice president of business development at the San Mateo, Calif.-based start-up."

Modeler Grady Booch in IBM-land- ADTmag.com: "Modeler Grady Booch in IBM-land
12/16/2003
By Jack Vaughan

He said business rules are likely the next great frontier for modeling improvement."

Lombardi Software and Corticon Align to Seamlessly Provide Rich Business Rules Within the TeamWorks BPM Platform: "December 15, 2003 03:01 PM US Eastern Timezone

Lombardi Software and Corticon Align to Seamlessly Provide Rich Business Rules Within the TeamWorks BPM Platform

AUSTIN, Texas & SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 15, 2003--
First partnership resulting from TeamWorks Everywhere(tm) initiative makes processes and rules easier to manage, speeding the deployment of enterprise-wide BPM solutions "