August 28, 2008   Sign In |  About ebizQ |  Contact Us |  Join ebizQ Gold Club
James Taylor
James Taylor's Decision Management
James is one the leading experts in enterprise decision management, a published author and a principal of Smart (enough) Systems LLC. His blog discusses the use of decision management technologies like predictive analytics and business rules to deliver agility, improve business processes and bring intelligent automation to SOA.

« Agile services, business rules and interface versioning | Main | Reuse and agility with rules »

October 03, 2006
Business process, business rules and legacy modernization

I saw this article on bpm.com - Modernizing Legacy Applications. There was a lot to like in this article but I felt like it glossed over some critical issues in legacy modernization using BPM and SOA. Let's consider some of the quotes that struck me

  • "Legacy systems contain vital business rules embedded within the source code"
  • "Though programming languages have come a long way the emphasis is still on technology related artifacts rather than business rules and requirements"
  • "But as important is the fact that many business rules are manual actions by people involved in the process and not programmatic code"

All this is true. But the answer is not to put these rules into a BPM tool but into a business rules management system. Doing this allows them to be managed, coded and maintained at a business rule level. It also allows for business owners to be engaged in managing rules and yet retains the flexibility to package up these rules into various services (in an SOA) or more traditional components (such as COBOL code).

This latter is important as sometimes it is the framework or process implementation in a legacy system that should be retained and logic within that framework that should be exposed as a service and managed as business rules. The California DMV's experience is a classic in this vein - the process of issuing registration has no changed in 30 years but the rules for fees change all the time. Keeping the legacy process, updating the fee calculation engine to use a business rules management system and then deploying these rules not only to the legacy system but also to other, newer systems as a service worked wonderfully.

So do think about business rules in your legacy systems, and about processes hidden within the portfolio of systems, but don't assume you must modernize the process. You may be able to just modernize the decisions.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Posted by jtaylor in Business Rules • Decision Technologies • Legacy Modernization • SOA |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.ebizq.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/757

Comments Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)

We ask that you type your code (displayed below) in the text box.This code is an image that cannot be read by a machine. It prevents automated programs from submitting comments.


Code:



Most Recent ebizQ Blog Entries
ADVERTISEMENT
This Work
Accountability:The opinions expressed in this blog are solely representative of the blog's author, and not of ebizQ

Subscribe to our Newsletters
ebizQ Weekly Gold Club Update
Live Webinar Updates
Updates from ebizQ Partners
ebizQ SOA Update
ebizQ BPM Update
ebizQ Security Update
ebizQ BI Update
ebizQ Open Source Software Update
Virtual Show Newsletter
ebizQ Web 2.0 and the Enterprise
Your E-mail Address:
The Future of Application Servers in the Enterprise & IBM WebSphere Application Server V7
Date: Sep 10, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM ET
(16:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!
How to Get a BPM Initiative off the Ground
Date: Sep 16, 2008
Time: 12:00 PM ET
(16:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!
Archived Webinars | Upcoming Webinars

Marketing Solutions | Feedback | About ebizQ | Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Site Map

Live Chat