Folks,
I am not subscribed to this list, but I was informed of this thread through one of our Tech Support folk. In particular this comment was what prompted him to email me: >Thank you to everybody who participated in very interesting discussions >on the subjects of "UML and Business Rules" & "Business Modeling with UML". >...the fact that nobody from Rational Corp. addressed these issues are >disturbing. I afraid that Rational is missing the whole point about >business modeling and has no strategy on this matter. If so - the >future of Rose as a business modeling tool would be in question. >Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts ...." The reason you saw no reply from anyone within Rational is probably because no one in the product group responsible for business modeling is on this forum. They are more likely on the RUP forum. The lack of response was certainly not because we have no strategy. I personally receive about 100 emails per day and subscribing to and responding to all the forums would be another full time job for me. So enough with the reasons why you never got a reply - on with the reply. :-) The whole thread was quite long and I gleaned the following questions/comments from my quick read through it: 1. UML and business rules - are they complimentary? 2. What are business rules? 3. Where do you capture them? 4. How do you describe them? 5. What is Rational's commitment to business modeling? 1. Are the UML and business rules complimentary? Business rules have traditionally been defined in simple text. The UML is just another form that you can use to express the rule. The benefit of using the UML is that it can reduce ambiguity. So the UML is just a way to express the business rule. (I fact, to absolutely define a business rule that cannot be misinterpreted you would use some form of mathematical equation. OCL provides that capability.) 2. A business rule, as defined by RUP, is a declaration of policy or condition that must be satisfied within the business. It is something that may be imposed on a business by a regulatory authority, or something the business decides must be done/conformed to. 3. You can, and do, capture business rules anywhere. There is no rule (pun intended) as to where you should capture them. You should just do whatever makes sense. In fact you probably don't even realise that you are capturing business rules all the time in many places. For example: a) Business rules are captured in your use cases every time you write step 1, 2, 3 - otherwise you would say: "perform the steps in any order". The order specified is actually a business rule. b) Business rules are captured in the BOM every time you define a sequence of interactions. You are describing the internal sequence that must occur to deliver the business value to the customer. Performing them out of sequence would not deliver the correct value. c) Business rules are captured in the business domain model by associations between business entities. d) Business rules are captured in the special requirements section of the use-case specification if they apply to a single use case. e) Business rules are captured in the supplementary specification if they apply to multiple use cases. d) Business rules are captured in a single artifact if you simply have too many to manage. (For example, an application that had a single use case for assessing social security eligibility had over 32,000 business rules imposed by the government.) The important thing to remember is that you want to get to writing code some day. Don't spend all your time arguing on where to put the business rules. 4. You can describe business rules as simple text at one extreme or use OCL at the other extreme. The more critical a system (e.g. some one may die if you get it wrong) the more important it is to define everything more formerly - not just business rules. 5. I am not permitted to discuss any futures but I can say this: "watch this space". Rational is certainly committed to business modeling and you will see good things in the future. Regards Bryon -----Original Message----- From: Lyalin, David S. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, August 13, 2002 8:30 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Subject: (ROSE) UML and Business Rules UML and Business Rules - are these two things complementary? Some people believe that when you use UML/Use Cases you don't need business rules techniques to capture business policies, regulations, restrictions, etc. - since it got captured in use cases anyway. Other people think that UML is not sufficient for these purposes. What is your approach to this? Thank you. David Lyalin ************************************************************************ * Rose Forum is a public venue for ideas and discussions. * For technical support, visit http://www.rational.com/support * * Post or Reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Subscription Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Archive of messages: * http://www.rational.com/support/usergroups/rose/rose_forum.jsp * Other Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To unsubscribe from the list, please send email * To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Subject: <BLANK> * Body: unsubscribe rose_forum ************************************************************************* ************************************************************************ * Rose Forum is a public venue for ideas and discussions. * For technical support, visit http://www.rational.com/support * * Post or Reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Subscription Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Archive of messages: * http://www.rational.com/support/usergroups/rose/rose_forum.jsp * Other Requests: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To unsubscribe from the list, please send email * To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * Subject: <BLANK> * Body: unsubscribe rose_forum *************************************************************************
