Principles of the Business Rule Approach (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series) (Paperback)

by Ronald G. Ross (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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 how they can be applied to their own situation. Well suited to be used in conjunction with Web services. Softcover.

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (February 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201788934
• ISBN-13: 978-0201788938
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 1 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.com Sales Rank: #323,398 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 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

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.

16 of 18 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 (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

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 19 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)

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.