One of the key components of a process is “Business Rule”. Business rule takes many forms inside your process definition and in a way is a manifestation of your company’s business policy. Business rules inside the process are used for policy enforcement, governance, decision management, operations efficiency etc.

Following are some basic types of rules that can be a part of your process.

1. Process conditions:  These are defined as the process gateways that determine a path process will take depending on the process parameters. For Example, if discount >10% go to approval path : if discount < 10% auto-approve order.

2. Data rules: These business rules are defined as facts in decision table or knowledge base. The process captures all required parameters and submits those to RETE based rules engine. Rules engine processes the data and returns the result back. For example, rules determining your insurance eligibility.

3. Event rules: Here the system is monitoring the various events and events patterns that are emerging inside the process or external to the process. You can define actions or alerts to be triggered when a certain pattern of events emerges over a specified time period. Such types of rules need Complex Event Processing and are used in applications like Credit Card Fraud detection or Utility Demand Response.

4. User Interface Rules: In order to add dynamic behavior to UI or to keep users from making mistakes and enforcing policy, another mechanism available is UI rules. They are evaluated as the end user is filling out the web forms. These may include enabling and disabling of UI as per business policy. An example could be, if the age of a user is less than 13 years, disable credit card field and enable parental approval required checkbox.

Your process may include many of such rule types.

Oracle OpenWorld provides a unique opportunity to listen to Oracle Business Process Management Experts and Customers.  We will discuss business rules during various sessions in Oracle OpenWorld. Two of the sessions specifically focused on business rules are listed below:

Accelerating an Implementation of Complex Worldwide Business Approval Rules

Wednesday, Oct 3, 10:15 AM

Moscone South – 305

Oracle Business Rules Use Cases Design and Testing
Wednesday, Oct 3, 3:30 PM

Marriott Marquis - Golden Gate C3

Oracle Business Process Management Track covers a variety of topics, and speakers covering technology, methodology and best practices. You can see the list of Business process Management sessions here.

Come back to this blog for more coverage from Oracle OpenWorld!