According to the definition given by Business Rules Group “a business rule is a provision that defines or limits any aspects of the business. Its purpose is to protect the business structure, control or influence its operations.” Entire methodologies are designed specifically to create and document business rules and apply them in automated systems. If you do not build a system that is largely governed by business rules, you do not need a carefully designed methodology. It is enough to identify and document the rules relevant to your system and link them with specific functional requirements.
There are many different standardized taxonomies known as classification schemes for organizing business rules. The simplest of them may consist of five types of business rules and is suitable in most cases. The sixth category – terms: words, phrases and abbreviations that are important for business. They are conveniently stored in a dictionary. It is much more important to maintain an agreed set of business rules when developing a product, than to debate hotly about how to classify them. Let us look at some types of business rules that you will have to face.
It is wise to know that data leakage may cause catastrophic consequences to any business. To avoid these problems people tend to use a penetration test service that is provided on a regular basis.
Facts
Facts are just the right statements about business. They often describe the connections and relationships between important business terms. Facts are also called invariants – invariable truths about the essence of data and their attributes. Business rules in many cases can refer to certain facts, but the latter are not usually mapped directly to functional software requirements. Information about the essence of data important for the system is sometimes used in data models created by an analyst or database architect.
Here are examples of facts:
- A unique barcode is printed on each chemical container
- Each order is paid; each element of the order contains data on the chemical, its quality, the size of the container and the number of containers
- The ticket price is not refunded if the buyer changes the route
- Sales tax is not taken from carriage fright
Restrictions
Restrictions (constraints) – determine what operations the system and its users can perform. Here are some words and phrases that are often used to describe the restrictive business rule: should, should not, cannot and only. For example, in such combinations:
- Should sign a loan agreement of a person under 18 years of age with one of his parents or a legal guardian
- A regular visitor of the library can put a hold on up to 10 books for himself
- An employee can request a substance from the list of first level chemicals only if he has completed a training course for working with dangerous compounds over the past 12 months
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