Steps to Configure a Rule Specification
When you configure a rule specification, you translate the requirements of a business rule into one or more rule statements. The rule statements represent the logic that determines whether a data set conforms to the business rule. You use the rule specification to create one or more mapplets that a developer can apply to a data set.
Before you configure the rule specification in the Analyst tool, perform the following steps:
- 1. Verify the business rule requirements.
- 2. Verify the business data properties.
- 3. Determine the sequence of the rule statements.
Verifying the Business Rule Requirements
Before you configure a rule specification, discuss the business rule with the data owners in the organization. Verify that the business rule is valid and ready to apply to the business data.
1. Identify the business rule that the rule specification represents.
2. Identify the business data set that the business rule validates.
3. List the business rule requirements that apply to the data inputs.
The business rule requirements indicate the types of rule statement that you create in the rule statement.
4. Identify the information types that the business rule applies to.
The information types indicate the data types of the inputs that you create in the rule specification.
Verifying the Business Data Properties
Before you create a rule specification, identify the business data sets that the rule specification can apply to. Work with a developer to identify the data sets. When you generate a mapplet from the rule specification, the developer adds the mapplet to a mapping and connects the mapping to the data sets.
1. Identify one or more data sets that the developer can select as a data source in a mapping. For example, identify the database and the table that contain the data.
2. Verify the data types of the data columns that the mapplet analyzes. You specify the data types when you create the inputs in the rule specification.
Note: You might not create an input for every column in the data set.
3. Discuss the steps to follow after the developer runs a mapping that contains the mapplet.
The developer gives you the results of each mapping. You determine if you need to update the rule specification and generate the mapplet again. Alternatively, you determine if the business needs to update the business data so that it conforms to the business rule.
Designing the Rule Specification
At a high level, a business rule defines a single objective that the business data must satisfy. Add a rule statement that analyzes the objective to the primary rule set. If the business rule defines more than one data outcome, you might define more than one rule statement in the primary rule set.
Add rule sets and rule statements below the primary rule set to validate the data that the primary rule set analyzes.
1. Create the inputs that the rule statements analyze. The inputs are a key prerequisite for the rule statements. The inputs represent the columns in the business data set that the business rule applies to.
2. Identify the business rule conditions that the business data must satisfy. Plan a rule statement for each condition.
3. Determine the sequence in which the rule statements must analyze the data.
Select the lowest dependencies in the business rule, and add a rule set for each dependency.
4. Add the rule sets that you need to the rule specification.
Work from the lowest level in the rule specification upward to the primary rule set.
5. Add the rule statements that you identified to the rule sets.
Note: You can move a rule statement from one rule set to another rule set. You can move a rule set to another location in the rule specification, and you can move a rule set to another rule specification.
6. Test the rule specification.
If the test data passes through the rule specification in the way that you expect, the rule specification is ready to use.