TADESSE TAREKE.pdf - Addis Ababa University

Development of BROOM Business Rules Object-Oriented Method
In a nutshell, the above analysis shows that the standard UML class diagram
notation is insufficient to model the class (Attributes and Operations) of a business
rules system since class diagram can only represent the static structures and
behaviors of a system. Now, the main question is, can we use the UML class
diagram for representing or modeling the dynamic structure and behaviors of a
system? It is most probable that the answer to this question is yes. This is because
UML, in general, class diagram, in particular, can be extended using the UML
extension mechanisms so as to meet the modeling requirements of our domain –
business rules systems. Note that this is one of the hypotheses made for the
research.
4.2.3 MODELING THE FLAVORS OF BUSINESS RULES
One of the basic ingredients of the business requirements is the existence of a set
of continually changing business rules. Moreover, based on the intent of the
business rule statement [22, 49], a business rule can:
(1) Define a Term
(2) Connect Terms into meaningful Facts
(3) Produce the result of a Calculation,
(4) Test Conditions to produce a new fact, or
(5) Test a condition to initiate action.
The last three categories are called Rules. In other words, business rules are each
one of the following kinds or flavors: Terms (definitions), Facts (connections), or
Rules (calculations, constraints, conditional logic). In our context, the word “rules”
is not equivalent to the phrase “business rules” (i.e., rules are one kind of business
rules).
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Rules