Customer Reviews

Business Rules Applied: Building Better Systems Using the Business Rules Approach

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I purchased Barbara von Halle's book after the 2001 Business Rules Forum in New Orleans. This forum is an annual meeting of experts, vendors, and participants in the business rules "evolution" and is used to share ideas and information among colleagues in the field. Barbara's book was introduced in many of the forum presentations, which prompted me to make the purchase. This action was perhaps the most significant step I have taken to fully understand the business rules methodology and has saved my current project from almost certain failure.

I have now implemented many of the ideas and techniques from the book and placed my business rules project on a road to success. My project has endured many obstacles, not the least of which is understanding the differences that are imposed on the project team from traditional re-engineering efforts. If I hadn't come across Barbara's excellent documentation on project scoping, rules discovery, and designing for the business rules approach, I would have seriously doubted our ability to implement the project successfully. My project team was able to read and comprehend the most important concepts from the book and we have been able to modify our project plan to incorporate her ideas and techniques.

I believe it is our responsibility as IT professionals to recognize the importance of the business rules movement and to follow a strict methodology when implementing any rules engine initiative. I must personally thank Barbara for sharing some of the most important concepts with this methodology. I honestly consider it my blueprint for success.

The fact is that this book covers business rules from an implementation approach, and does so in great detail. If you are new to business rules you should first read Business Rules and Information Systems: Aligning IT with Business Goals by Tony Morgan, which is better for beginners. That book introduces business rules at a basic level.

This book expands Morgan's work by drilling down into details and exposing the nuances that a seasoned practitioner will appreciate. However, the main value of this book is the way Ms. von Halle steps you through the complexities of implementing business rules as an organizational methodology. This is not an easy task, but she manages to provide a complete and comprehensive approach that will guarantee success if carefully followed. I think the work breakdown structure alone that is provided in the book makes it essential to anyone who is tasked with implementing business rules.

In addition, the tables, checklists and documents and information from the book's web site add even more value. This is an important book about an important topic. It's not easy to read, but the diligent reader (assuming prior experience) will find everything he or she needs to know about business rules, the value proposition for using them, and how to implement them. It's the most authoritative book on the subject, and will probably remain so for years to come.

The business rules approach offers a solid advancement in systems development and Barbara's book expounds concrete steps that you may take to implement the method in your organization.

My principle criticism of the text is that the first half of the book has been poorly edited and is almost impossible to read. There are many sloppy sentences, grammar errors and redundant constructions. Because this topic is important to me I took several weeks slogging through the book to adsorb the materials I needed. This should have taken much less time.

The book takes a very strong relational database approach to the mapping of terms constraints and facts. If fact, a substantial portion of the book is devoted to recycled relational data modeling and for some reason this part of the book is more flowing and eloquent. The text's arguments are weakest when the author presents a poor understanding of current object technology. For instance, there is no discussion of patterns and many of the declarations of the limitation of Object Technology are uninformed. I would suggest that those with OOSE orientation overlook this bias. There is some good material for OO practitioners.

There are two competing views in the business rules camps. One view is that business rules presents and solid requirements gathering technique. The next view is that business rules are all about application generation. The first technique has spawned software product that 'listen' to the data in the database in a 'rules engine'. Barbara Van Halle describes these tools. Eloquent presents the second view.

In summary, if you are seriously considering the addition of business rules methods to your project or organization then buy and read this book otherwise wait for a second edition.

This is one of two books currently in print about business rules, and each book addresses the subject from a different perspective. The other book, Business Rules and Information Systems by Tony Morgan, is a better introduction because it assumes less technical knowledge. This book, however, has unique strengths that the other book doesn't, including:

(1) A comprehensive approach to preparing for and implementing business rules as an enterprise-wide discipline. It accomplishes this by providing a life cycle approach to business rules development through ongoing management.
(2) The implementation approach is provided as a work breakdown structure, which significantly reduces your planning for an enterprise-wide initiative (or a pilot initiative based on a single project).
(3) There is an accompanying web site that provides additional papers, case studies and other materials that enhance the value of the book.

The introduction to business rules and concepts is perhaps too verbose, but is thorough. What this part of the book lacks in sparkling prose it more than compensates in detail. I particularly liked the chapter devoted to business rules methodology, which takes the concepts and applies them in a structured way. Another strong point is that the book provides many examples to reinforce points under discussion, and summarizes key information in easy-to-read tables. The illustrations that are sprinkled throughout the book also add clarity.

If you're new to business rules the best book, in my opinion, is Morgan's Business Rules and Information Systems. However, after reading that book you'll also want this one if you are serious about implementing business rules because of the way Ms. von Halle has structured the flow and content. Also, the author is one of the pioneers in the business rules community, which adds considerable authority and credibility to her approach.

Dear Reader,

Business Rules, like Data Warehousing, both have the potential to dramatically reverse the downward spiral in the credibility and coherence of many IT organizations. Both initiatives focus on giving the business what it wants; Data Warehousing from mainly a strategic decision-making perspective and Business Rules from mainly an operational-support and tactical-orientation perspective.

To understand the importance of the role of Business Rules in business is to recognize a done deal, to actively go about leveraging Business Rules as the key component in process development, application development and application evolution is really the thing that will separate the smart people from the sceptics.

One of the problems of Business Rules, like Data Warehousing as well, is that they are both seemingly intuitive - the sort of thing that one could do just by imagining oneself what needs to be done. Now, don't let me put you off, and I would say that there is an element of truth in the idea that, at a certain level of abstraction, both the Data Warehousing and Business Rules concepts are very straightforward. However, and this is the crux of the matter, there are a number of seemingly small and insignificant project decisions to be made where the right decisions (based on experience) are not always the most obvious or intuitive choices, especially when we base our decisions on knowledge of other IT project methods, and, which in turn could lead to decisions that result in the collapse of your BR or DW project and the failure of yet another IT project.

So, if you think that Business Rules might be just the thing for your business then read this book. In it you will find a wealth of knowledge and experience. It leads the reader from a good description of real reasons for using the Business Rules approach, Business Rules concepts, through to the process of identifying, defining and capturing Business Rules, and describes, in great detail, an iterative project approach to the active and evolutionary management of Business Rules in business. The book is well structured, is easy to read - for such a detailed book - and, focuses on important issues, options and decisions involved in Business Rules.

As a long term advocate of the Business Rules approach I could not rate this book more highly.

Best regards,

Martyn R Jones
Iniciativa Org, SL

Here are my impresions after having read through 3/4 of this book:
1. The author presents the Business Rules approach in a manner that is extremely flexible, considering the fact that many projects may or may not have the benefit of being developed within a structured enterprise achitecture. The author recommends some very useful techniques (such as generic versus specific database design) that one can use to help minimize the cost of making iterative changes to a system. The benefits of leveraging the rules of a business is clearly explained in detail throuhgout the book (at least in the parts that I've read so far).

2. For those who are familiar with enterprise analysis, such as the Zachman Framework, it may be somewhat difficult at times to determine at what scope the author is speaking about when dealing with the various system development phases. I had to remind myself that the book deals with system development and not (necessarily) enterprise analysis. Within an enterprise architecture, such items as the conceptual and logical data model should already be flushed out relative to the business as a whole before any specific system is developed. Consequently, seeing these steps within the development of a project was somewhat confusing. Since most businesses I have dealt with don't even have an enterprise architecture (or even know what one is), it does make sense on one level to include these steps during system development. The author provides useful resources to look into for information on how the business rules approach fits into the Zachman Framework, but I was hoping for more details in this book before I purchased it.

3. I was also hoping that the Process Analysis section would deal with analyzing business functions and processes in addition to the workflow of a particular system. An excellent example was provided by the author relating to the consequences of database design without an enterprise data model - a similar example of the consequenses of workflow design without a business process model would have been equally helpful.

Now, if only management would "see the light" and stop practicing all of those system development techniques the author suggests to avoid (while seriously considering what is being said in this book and others like it), I could actually use this methodology in "real-life". :-)

This is the book I was waiting for. Before this book I spent hundreds of hours researching business rules on the internet and still didn't get the detailed material that this book contains. I agree with other reviewers that you can use this book to base a business rules implementation on, and you can also use it to teach business rules to your team. I think it has a perfect balance of implementation, concept and practical information and recommend it to anyone who is interested in business rules. I skimmed through the Morgan book that others have recommended and like it too, but it is basic and will not help you in implementation. This (von Halle) book is the one to get and it's the most complete book on the subject available.

I find the concepts introduced in the book such as categorisation of business rules, and the worked examples using a few products very useful.

However, I wish the book can be less verbose, with less repetition of the same concepts (such as continuously expounding on the advantages of business rules approach) throughout the whole book. They are distracting and not necessary. The book could have been more concise.

This is a topic worth exploring into and I hope some of UML/MDA efforts can incorporate the ideas here.

I bought this book based on some of the enthusiastic reviews here but was very disappointed. I think people who see rules engines as the next big thing and are very excited about it may be enthusiatistic about this book because it pushes that line very hard. However, there is very little in this book that reflects hard practical experience or that is likely to surprise an experienced software designer with a basic understanding of rules engines. Good books on this subject are still waiting to be written.

Instead of this book I would recommend reading "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" by Eric Evans and the documentation for whatever rules systems you are considering.

There are only a handful of classic books that define the data and information management industry. Barbara von Halle has now written two of those books. Business Rules Applied defines business rule development the same way that the Handbook of Relational Database Design defined data modeling and database design back in 1988. Business Rules Applied is a must-read for all professionals that are serious about managing their business rules.