In recent years it has been discovered that business rules constitute an entire body of knowledge that has not been adequately addressed in either the analysis or design phases of system development. Typically, business rules have been buried in program code or in database structures. It turns out, however, that the identification of business rules is important in its own right. Moreover, it is different from the definition of data structure in a data model, and from the definition of processes.

    The following three articles introduce the subject. The first article below was written by the Business Rules Group in 1995, describing the different kinds of business rules. The next two describes business rules relative to entity/relationship models, and the second is a rigorous definition of exactly what a business rule is.
    Defining Business Rules -- What are they really?
        (The report by the GUIDE Business Rules Group, describing the syntax of business rules in defining and information system.)
    Managing Business by the Rules
      • ECO '99
    What Data Models Can't Do
      • GUIDE, 1995
      • East Coast Oracle User Group: ECO '95
      • Business Rules Summit, 1996
      • Bahrain Information Technology Society, 1996
      • CASE Day, Oracle Openworld, 1996
      • 9th International DAMA Conference, 1997
      • Oracle Development Tools User Group, 1997

    In 2004, Dave Hay described the model from the point of view of business rules and what can and cannot be shown in a data model.
      What Data Models can do with Business Rules
      • The Data Administration Newsletter, Issue 27 (1st Quarter, 2004)
      What Data Models cannot do with Business Rules
      • The Data Administration Newsletter, Issue 28 (2nd Quarter, 2004)
      The Business Constraint Model
      • The Data Administration Newsletter, Issue 29 (3rd Quarter, 2004)
      Data Driven Business Rules
      • The Data Administration Newsletter, Issue 30 (4th Quarter, 2004)

      Bibliography



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