Principles of the Business Rule Approach [Paperback]

Ronald G. Ross (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201788934 | ISBN-13: 978-0201788938 | Publication Date: February 15, 2003 | Edition: 1

The idea of Business Rules has been around for a while. Simply put, a Business Rule is a statement that defines or constrains some aspect of the business. In practice they are meant to reduce or eliminate the delays, waste, and frustration associated with the IT department having to be involved with almost every action affecting an organization's information systems. The advent of Web services has created renewed interest in them. There are now several well established rules-based products that have demonstrated the effectiveness of their use. But until now there has not been a definitive guide to Business Rules. Ron Ross, considered to be the father of Business Rules, will help organizations apply this powerful solution to their own computer system problems. This book is intended to be the first book that anyone from an IT manager to a business manager will read to understand what Business Rules are, and what how they can be applied to their own situation.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

The Business Rule Approach represents a major paradigm shift in business-system design and development. Employing a business-driven approach, the use of business rules has been proven to enhance the effectiveness, flexibility, and efficiency of business systems. The technology is appropriate for any kind of organization, and is especially well suited for development in the rapidly expanding Web services industry.

Written by the world's leading expert in business rules theory and technology, Principles of the Business Rule Approach is appropriate for business and technical professionals, as well as academics. It serves as a concise introduction and tutorial, presenting understandable explanations and practical techniques.

This book explores the rationale behind business rules, as well as the many opportunities presented by this innovative new approach. It explains key business-rule concepts and offers experience-based best practices for expressing business rules. In addition, the book looks at the role of business rules within the context of a wider trend towards model-based development and offers an accessible introduction to the underlying theory of business rules and notation.

Topics covered include

• How the Business Rule Approach is changing the face of business and opening new areas of opportunity
• The direct impact of business rules on IT projects
• Organizing basic business knowledge
• Understanding business structure and processes
• Working successfully with BRS RuleSpeak,TM including rule categories and sentence patterns for rule statements
• Expressing business logic using decision tables
• An in-depth look at fact models
• Theoretical foundations, including formal constraints and predicates

Numerous appendixes address specific topics in business rule technology, such as the Pattern-R approach and notation, evaluating the truth value of a rule, IF...THEN syntax, and more.

Knowledge of the emerging Business Rule Approach is critical for all who are at the leading edge of business system development. Principles of the Business Rule Approach is the authoritative guide and an essential resource.

0201788934B01132003

About the Author

Ronald G. Ross is cofounder and principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC, a firm that provides workshops, consulting services, and publications centered on business analysis and rules. He codeveloped Proteus™ methodology, including the popular RuleSpeak™. He also serves as executive editor of www.BRCommunity.com and is a regular columnist for the internationally acclaimed Business Rules Journal hosted there.

0201788934AB01132003

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (February 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201788934
• ISBN-13: 978-0201788938
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,294 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ronald G. Ross is recognized internationally as the 'father of business rules.' He has served as Co-Chair of the annual Business Rules Forum Conference since 1997. He was a charter member of the Business Rules Group (BRG) in the 1980s, and an editor of the two landmark BRG papers, "The Business Motivation Model: Business Governance in a Volatile World" (2000, revised 2005) and the "Business Rules Manifesto" (2003). He is also active in OMG standards development, having core involvement in SBVR (Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Business Rules).

Mr. Ross is Co-Founder and Principal of Business Rule Solutions, LLC (www.BRSolutions.com) along with Gladys S.W. Lam. His popular public seminars, the first on business rules (starting in 1996) and the longest-running in the industry, are given through AttainingEdge (www.AttainingEdge.com).

At BRS, Mr. Ross co-develops Proteus, its landmark business analysis and business rules methodology, which features numerous innovative techniques including the popular RuleSpeak. These are the latest offerings in a 35-year career that has consistently featured creative, business-driven solutions.

Mr. Ross also serves as Executive Editor and regular columnist of www.BRCommunity.com and its flagship on-line publication, Business Rules Journal. Mr. Ross was formerly Editor of the Data Base Newsletter from 1977 to 1998.

Mr. Ross is the author of 8 professional books. His newest are: Business Rule Concepts (2009), a 3rd edition of his popular, easy-to-read 1998 handbook, and Principles of the Business Rule Approach, Addison-Wesley (2003), featuring the business rationale and opportunity for business rules. An earlier work, The Business Rule Book (1994, 1997), was the seminal work in the field.

Mr. Ross received his M.S. in information science from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his B.A. from Rice University.

Specialties> Business Rule Solutions,LLC provides workshops, consulting services, publications, and methodology supporting business analysis, business rules, decision modeling, business vocabulary, and rule management.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too Much Fluff!, May 3, 2005

By 

Dan Albarran (Bethesda, MD United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Principles of the Business Rule Approach (Paperback)

I generally refrain from purchasing books that only have 2 or less reviews unless it is referred by a friend or colleague because I generally assume they were written by close friends of the author. This time I decided to take a gamble due to the dearth of reading material on this topic. While the book bring ups a lot of good concepts it is amazingly lacking in others.

Pros:
1) Chapter on rule speak was pretty good
2) The chapter on fact models is ok. The back of the book says "in depth look at fact models". This is not true. It was severely deficient. A fact model is so similar to a class diagram. You are better off reading books on class diagramming and applying those principles and knowledge to rules.
3) Discussion of rule classifications was very good

Cons
1) The book has 372 pages but if you remove the appendixes, glossary and index you are left with 284. The appendixes were useless and felt like filler. All terms in the glossary were defined elsewhere in the book
2) The author particular use of footnotes was distracting. This was by far my biggest pet peeve of the book. a) Many notes were used to advertise the author's company products and services. b) Many contradicted the passage. p 80, foot note 22 says starts off by saying "That is not entirely correct..." P126, footnote 4, " I mean rejectors here". If that is what you meant, why waste a footnote. Just say what you mean in the text. c) The average page had 2+ foot notes and I would say that 95% of the foot notes were not used to reference anything but to add to the thought noted on the page which meant that readers had to continuously read the passage then go to the bottom to read the note over and over again.
3) The analogies to the human body were fluff and added no real value. I would say that the book has about 100 pages of real content. Much of the book is repetitive.
4) There is a discussion on decision tables but not decision trees. I have no idea why considering how prominent decision trees are in rule projects.
5) I would have liked to see more material on modeling rules. The book is surprisingly weak here.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A primary resource from one of the industry experts, March 6, 2004

By 

Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Principles of the Business Rule Approach (Paperback)

This book is probably the most important of the handful of business rules literature available. Not only is the author is one of the true experts in the field who is a prolific writer of articles on the topic as well as co-developer of related tools, but the book is the most comprehensive work on the nuts and bolts of employing business rules.

The book is divided into five parts, starting with background, definitions and cases in Part I. Concepts and the mechanics of business rules covered in Part II cover the basics in considerable detail, which are built upon in Part III, Best Practices for Expressing Rules. This part is the meat of the book. It starts with a list of dos and don'ts for rule capture and documentation, then introduces "BRS Rulespeak", which is a set of formal rules and approach for identifying, classifying, and expressing business rules. Part IV is a somewhat loose collection of advice for IT professionals (bearing in mind that business rules span both the IT and business domains), and to a minor degree delves into data models, knowledge management and how business rules directly link to business imperatives and processes. Part V digs deeply into formal logic and facts, and is an important part of this book for the practitioner. I especially liked the appendices to this part because they went even deeper into formal methods.

Although I rate this book the highest among the three I own on the subject, if you are only exploring business rules the best place to start before reading this book is Tony Morgan's "Business Rules and Information Systems: Aligning IT with Business Goals"(ISBN 0201743914). Also, Barbara Von Halle's "Business Rules Applied: Building Better Systems Using the Business Rules Approach" (ISBN 0471412937) is a worthwhile resource to be used in conjunction with this book because goes deeper into the practical aspects of implementing business rules as an enterprise initiative.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Frist Book on Business Rules, August 16, 2003

By 

Dave Mccomb (Ft Collins, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Principles of the Business Rule Approach (Paperback)

This is the place to get started with the business rules approach. I've read several other books on the subject, including Ross's earlier works, and Barbara vanHalle's, but this is the one that brings it all together.

He makes the case much more compellingly for why we need the business rules approach, and then sets up a great framework for understanding how to express and organize the rule base. This is not AI style rules, and he makes it clear what the differences are.

High level assertions are backed up with theoretcial underpinnings. The book is kept easy to read with lots of illustrations and side bars with amusing rules encountered in everyday life.