Blog

WELCOMING SBVR 1.4

A new version 1.4 of SBVR was published by Object Management Group in May 2017 after 2 years of work and debate. You can download it from http://www.omg.org/spec/SBVR/ (free download and you don’t need to register). How is SBVR 1.4 different from previous versions of SBVR? To answer this question, let’s separate the formal core of SBVR from its more accidental explanatory […]

IS OR EVER NEEDED?

The tip: “Don’t mix your ANDs and ORs” has been a staple of programming tutorials for decades now, and it’s still as relevant as ever. It also applies to writers of natural language. Here is an example of that fatal mix of and and or that causes ambiguity: A driver must have a valid driving […]

A, Each, Every, All, or Any?

Rule authors are faced with the choice between a, each, every, all, and any, just about every time they write a new business rule in English. This is tiresome and it makes it hard for them to be consistent. A business rule tells you about the desirable business conduct in a particular situation. The rule applies each time that situation occurs. That’s why it […]

INTERVIEW WITH SILVIE SPREEUWENBERG

An interview by Silvie Spreeuwenberg with myself on the book advertised on this site can be found at http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2014/b747.html (free access but you need to create a password), one of the most important forums on business rules and (more recently also) on decision models.

PROCESS RULES

There was a time when process modellers didn’t “do” business rules. They made process flow diagrams. The only thing that really mattered was “processes”. The assumption was that any rule important enough for a process would surface in the process flow. You could have a rule saying that a client’s creditworthyness had to be checked […]

IT´S A DOCUMENT WORLD

Business rules analysis invites you to state facts about a business in concise language sentences. Each of those statements expresses a single point of truth. This has a technical reason. It’s because of the way business rules are rooted in propositional logic, as explained in great detail in OMG’s SBVR specification. But this format also […]

REQUIREMENTS AND BUSINESS RULES

Are requirements and business rules the same thing? Unfortunately, no. But it’s a good question: many people get interested in business rules because they are in the requirements phase of a software project, and they wonder if business rules could help them. Business rules tell you how a business is intended to be run in […]