Business rules authoring is nothing new. Nowadays, business rules automate hundreds, thousands, and sometimes millions of operational decisions that organizations make everyday. There decisions include eligibility, fraud and credit risk, pricing, and more. In this post, we cover how you can author rules with data, standards, and app in Sparkling Logic SMARTS™. We cover tips on how to write business rules in another post and decision authoring in a webinar.
Business Rules Authoring with Syntax
Traditional ways of writing business rules involved creating “IF…THEN…” statements. The exact syntax would vary depending on your rules engine. Regardless, this exercise would require much skill. Often rules would become so complex that they would be difficult for business analysts to understand or manage. The complexity was due to 2 primary reasons. First, the “vocabulary” is usually limited (or inflexible) leading to a lot of nesting and “spaghetti code” workarounds. Second, the business rules are written in a way to optimize runtime performance, which may not be in the order that’s most intuitive to humans. Therefore, SMARTS™ offers several ways for business analysts to more intuitively author business rules in a manner that’s easy to understand and manage.
For business analysts comfortable writing syntax rules, SparkL is Sparkling Logic’s SQL-like natural language format that offers greater flexibility than most. For example, business analysts can create business terms to express a reusable ruleset in shorthand. Business analysts can leverage mathematical expressions, string manipulations, regular expressions, patterns, dates, logical manipulations, constraints, and much more.
Authoring with Data
However, for business analysts that aren’t familiar with SQL, they can easily author rules with RedPen™, our patented point-and-click tool. Users simple upload sample data, point-and-click on the relevant data fields, and follow the prompts to “write” rules. These rules can be immediately tested on the sample data, allowing users to continuously validate their rules as the author them
Authoring with the DMN Standard
In cases where formal requirements need to be documented, Pencil can be used to capture those requirements in a decision model through drag-and-drop following the DMN standard. Once the model has been finalized, SMARTS™ can convert that model into executable business rules that can be further refined.
Any of the above 3 methods can be combined. In addition, SMARTS™ fluid rule metaphors enables rulesets to be displayed in various representations: decision table, decision tree, decision graph, or syntax rules. Users can switch displays and pick the one that’s most appropriate to complete their task at hand.
Authoring with Business Apps
So far, we have covered various low-code tools for business rules authoring. However, there may be cases where you want less skilled employees to be able to manage an aspect of a decision. For example, updating tax rates. Rather than exposing these employees to the entire decision project or the SMARTS™ user interface, you can develop Business Apps, custom web-based interfaces that interact with SMARTS™. Business Apps offer a truly no-code solution to author business rules.
Learn more about Decision Management and Sparkling Logic’s SMARTS™ Rules Authoring Capabilities