The vocabulary defines what policy managers can write business rules about. The elements of the vocabulary are defined in a Business Object Model (BOM).
The BOM may be defined from scratch, or created from an Execution Object Model (XOM) that references compiled Java classes and other data sources. The BOM can also be extended without modifying the XOM.
You can define a BOM in one of two ways:
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Bottom-up: Your XOM describes quite extensively what is needed for rule editing. In this case, you can create a BOM entry from the XOM. If you discover that some elements are needed in the BOM to facilitate rule editing for policy managers, you can always extend the BOM by creating business elements and mapping to the XOM.
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Top-down: You can create business elements without necessarily considering the way that the execution elements are going to be implemented. At a later date when the execution elements are implemented, you can specify a mapping for all your business elements.
The BOM contains:
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Business rules, which express a business policy. Business rules have a list of conditions to meet before performing a list of actions. You write business rules using the Business Action Language (BAL).
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Technical rules, comprising a condition part that binds variables to objects and attribute values and specifies tests on attribute values, and an action part that specifies the actions to be carried out if the rule is executed. You write technical rules in Rule Studio using the ILOG Rule Language (IRL).
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