VISUAL INFORMATION BUILDER FOR BUSINESS RULES

摘要

A method, apparatus, and system for a visual information builder for business rules are provided. By providing an additional interface layer over a general purpose business rule creation interface, role-based and context-sensitive interaction and presentation can be provided to abstract the complexity of the underlying service platform that supports the business rules. Templates are used to provide custom context-sensitive user interfaces and to hide complexity from the user by limiting the scope of the rule dictionary exposed to the user. The general rule building process is uniformly consistent across different contexts and operates similarly at the block and rule scale. Moreover, logical combinations are built using a consistent logical layout specifying logical operators and order of operations based on direction of expansion and relative positions. The logical combinations that are built in VIB can be automatically translated into corresponding business rule code for evaluation and execution by a rules engine.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving a request to launch a visual information builder for a specific task of an application that uses a business rule engine; accessing a stored rule model of two or more different candidate rule models, wherein the rule model comprises a plurality of objects comprising conditions and actions, retrieved from a rule dictionary of the business rule engine, that are based on the specific task, wherein a particular object of the plurality of objects is associated with a template defining one or more options, for the particular object, that are based on the specific task; presenting a user interface of the visual information builder to arrange a logical combination of objects that are selected from the rule model, wherein the particular object is editable in the user interface according to the template; converting the logical combination into one or more business rules evaluable by the business rule engine; and storing the one or more business rules in the rule dictionary; wherein the method is performed by one or more computing devices.