Business Rule Management for Business Users

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Business Rule Management for Business Users

Developers publish rule projects to Rule Team Server. Rule Team Server enables business analysts and policy managers to maintain the business rules, and report on these rules. A business analyst or policy manager with administrator privileges can then deploy the latest version of the business rules to the application from Rule Team Server to the Rule Execution Server, either directly, or through a staged process in cooperation with a Quality Assurance (QA) department and system administrator.

The following table describes the module you need to enable business rule management for business users.

Table 7 Business Rule Management Modules

Module	Description
	Rule Team Server is a scalable rule management server and repository with a collaborative Web environment for authoring, managing, validating, and deploying business rules. Rule Team Server is integrated into a J2EE application server to provide a central storage system for business rules and their metadata. Policy managers use Rule Team Server to work collaboratively on rule artifacts. Access to the rule projects and artifacts is controlled by the administrator using permission management. Rule Team Server provides history and versioning services that support auditing and rollback of rule artifacts.

Module

Description

Rule Team Server is a scalable rule management server and repository with a collaborative Web environment for authoring, managing, validating, and deploying business rules.

Rule Team Server is integrated into a J2EE application server to provide a central storage system for business rules and their metadata.

Policy managers use Rule Team Server to work collaboratively on rule artifacts. Access to the rule projects and artifacts is controlled by the administrator using permission management.

Rule Team Server provides history and versioning services that support auditing and rollback of rule artifacts.

The following table describes the user roles involved in enabling business rule management for business users.

Table 8 Business Rule Management Roles

Role	Description
	Policy managers are experts in business logic and the owners of business policy within an organization, they manage these corporate policies. Policy managers are responsible for writing or enforcing the business policies of an enterprise. Policy managers participate in the initial process of extracting business rules from existing policy (documents, databases, and so on). This process is carried out with the business analyst whose aim is to determine the vocabulary elements that are necessary to be able to write the rules that implement the policy. Policy managers work in Rule Team Server and are responsible for: creating and updating rules reviewing how the execution of rules is orchestrated in a ruleflow reporting on the status of the business policy
	System administrators are responsible for ensuring a smoothly running environment, and have the ability to restore a particular application state. In the context of business rule management, system administrators are responsible for: installing and configuring Rule Team Server managing user access to the rule management servers
	Business analysts translate the policy into a formal specification acceptable to developers, and validate the formal specification with policy managers. In the context of business rule management, business analysts are responsible for synchronizing rule project content between Rule Studio and Rule Team Server.

The following table describes the activities involved in enabling business rule management for business users.

Table 9 Business Rule Management Activities

Activity	Description
	When the business rule application is ready to be made available to business analysts and policy managers, developers publish rule projects to Rule Team Server, a Web-based business rule management environment for business users. Rule projects are then accessible to business users in a multi-user, access-controlled Web application. Synchronization is two-way, so developers can update their working copy of the rule project with the contents of the Rule Team Server repository as changed by policy managers and business analysts, at any time.
	Policy managers and business analysts create and edit business rules in Rule Team Server. Their work is saved in a repository database that handles versioning, history, and multi-user access.
	Policy managers and business analysts use baselines to create a snapshot of the rules they worked on before deploying them, write queries on the business rules in their rule project, and create reports on the results of the queries. Policy managers can see the result of their work, or review the changes made by others, by searching the business rules in their rule project.

Related Sections

Enabling Business Rule Management for Business Users

Storing and Sharing Rules

Rule Team Server Online Help

Flash Demo: Rule Team Server Tour

Flash Demo: Synchronizing Between Rule Studio and Rule Team Server

Business Rule Management for Business Users

Related Sections

Related Tutorials and Samples