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January 15, 2008
Repository-based code with business rules

I came across an interesting article on Martin Fowler's blicki this week - RepositoryBasedCode. In this article he talks about "the idea that the core definition of a system should be held in a model and edited through projections" and this got me thinking about business rules and whether a typical business rules management system (wiki) would meet his criteria.

• They allow multiple representations of the "code" by projecting business user rule management interfaces (wiki), as well as a declarative "programming" interface
• They allow storage of the rules in a variety of persistent stores such as flat files, databases, XML repositories etc.
• They have an executable format, which may or may not be code but that is generated from the stored format.
• They allow you to manipulate and reason about the rules and their interactions using tools such as execution browsers, interactive viewers of the logical interconnections between rules and query tools for navigating the explicit and implicit relationships
• They can represent rules in graphical formats such as decision trees and decision tables as well as various kinds of reporting and read-only reports

Based on that list, at least, it would seem that a business rules management system or BRMS would qualify as a Repository-Based Code system. As many BRMS products also integrate with source code control systems and use XML representations for storage, even one of his objections to repositories is addressed.
There are many reasons to like business rules management system but the benefits Martin outlines for being repository-based are certainly among them.

Posted by jtaylor in Business Rules |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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