Creating New Scenarios

Online Helps > Rule Scenario Manager Console > Scenarios > Creating New Scenarios

Creating New Scenarios

You create new scenarios in the Scenario Builder page. Newly created scenarios are stored in the Rule Scenario Manager database, and are available for later editing and launching and for inclusion in scenario suites.

A scenario is defined by three elements:

the path to the ruleset to execute
input data for the rules to execute on
a set of tests to perform on the execution results.

You must specify the ruleset path before you can launch the scenario. The Launch button remains inactive in the Scenario Browser and Scenario Builder until this has been defined.

Create a new, blank scenario

Click the Scenarios tab to display the Scenario Navigator and Scenario Browser.
Click Create a new scenario at the bottom of the scenario list to open the Scenario Builder displaying a blank scenario template.

At this point, the scenario has been created, and you can navigate away from the Scenario Builder page without losing the new scenario.

Enter a Name and a Description for the scenario in the text fields.
Enter the name of a Folder, including a path to a subfolder if necessary, into which to organize the new scenario. The new scenario will be located in the specified folder in the Scenario Navigator:

Click Save at the bottom of the page.

The scenario will now be displayed in the Scenario Navigator in the folder specified above. Note that scenario names and descriptions need not be unique.

The following steps describe how to complete the definition of the scenario. Click Save at any time to save your changes up to that point.

Select the ruleset

In the Ruleset Navigator, navigate through the available RuleApps to select a ruleset to test. You can specify a precise version of a RuleApp/ruleset by toggling the versioning button at the top of the navigator.

Selecting a ruleset while it displays an absolute path means that the scenario will always execute that version of the ruleset. If the ruleset is selected while it displays no version information, the latest version of the ruleset is executed when the scenario is launched.

The icon refreshes the navigator display, which is useful if a RuleApp server has been modified.

When you select a ruleset in the navigator, information about it is displayed in the Scenario Builder, in the format RuleApp/ruleset, or RuleApp/RuleApp-version/ruleset/ruleset-version if versioning was enabled in the Ruleset Navigator.

For example:

Rulesets that have been enabled for BOM execution can also be selected in a scenario. A ruleset is BOM-enabled when its ruleset.bom.enabled property is set to true in the Rule Execution Server hosting it. In the scenario definition, BOM-enabled rulesets are identified by a specific ruleset icon in the Scenario Builder, and an option to execute the ruleset in the BOM:

Note that BOM-enabled rulesets require differently formatted input data to rulesets executed on the XOM. See Input Data for details.

If required, you can select a different server on which to execute the ruleset from the Execute On Server drop-down list.

Select the input data

Click Select Input Data to display a table of input datasets, and define the input data for the ruleset to execute on in one of the following ways:

Click Apply in the row of one of the input datasets in the list to select it.
Click Browse and select a file containing input datasets. The file can be in XML or Excel format. Click Add to import the file and add the new datasets to the list, or click Update to update the file's datasets in the Console if the file had originally been downloaded and then modified. Click Apply in a dataset's row to select it.
Click Open an empty Excel spreadsheet (if it is displayed) to open an Excel spreadsheet containing a template for the input data specified by the selected ruleset. Enter the input data, save the file, and then import it as described above.

The currently selected input dataset, if any, is indicated by an arrow:

Once selected as the input dataset for the scenario, you can click its name in the Scenario Builder to display the corresponding ruleset signature.

More detailed information on working with input data is available in Input Data.

Select the tests

Click Select Test Set to display a table of test sets, and define the tests to apply to the ruleset execution results in one of the following ways:

Click Apply in the row of one of the test sets in the list to select it.
Click Browse and select an XML file containing a set of tests. Click Add to import the file and add the test set to the list, and click Apply in its row.
Click Create a new Test Set to open a page where you can define a new test set, and click Apply to select the new test set.

The currently selected test set, if any, is indicated by an arrow:

Once selected as the test set for the scenario, you can click its name in the Scenario Builder to display its tests, allowing you to edit them if required.

To perform non-regression testing, you can specify a baseline report, which is a scenario report from an earlier scenario execution, in a test set definition. The calculated values contained in this baseline report can be applied as the corresponding test values in the new scenario.

More detailed information on working with tests is available in Tests.

Save the scenario

Click Save in the Scenario Builder to register the scenario definition. Note that you can click Save at any time during the scenario creation process to register your changes up to that point.

When you have finished creating the scenario, you can launch it directly from the Scenario Builder page. See Launching Scenarios for details.