Vocabulary Elements

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Vocabulary Elements

A vocabulary is composed of a set of business terms, phrases, and constants. Whether a vocabulary element is a business term, a phrase, or a constant depends on the nature of its corresponding business element.

Vocabulary elements appear in the drop-down lists of business rule editors.

Business Term

A business term is a key concept handled in business rule artifacts. It is the verbalization of a class or nested class in the BOM.

For example, customer is a business term.

Warning

Do not use the characters " and > in term labels, they will cause warnings and ambiguity problems when used in rules.

Navigation Phrase

A navigation phrase is a phrase that associates two business elements. It can be the verbalization of:

A method that has a nonvoid return type
The getter part of an attribute

For example, {last name} of {this} is a navigation phrase for the attribute Customer.lastName.

A predicate phrase is a specific type of navigation phrase that verbalizes a nonvoid method that returns a boolean or java.lang.Boolean. A predicate phrase has an implicit subject. For example, {this} is loyalty program member is a predicate phrase for the attribute Customer.loyaltyProgramMember.

Action Phrase

An action phrase applies an action to an object. It can be the verbalization of:

A method that has a void return type.
The setter part of an attribute.

For example, in {this}, display the message {0} is an action phrase for the method Session.displayMessage(String).

Constant

A constant is the verbalization of the public static final attribute of a class with same type as this class. For example, Minivan is a constant for the public static final attribute CarGroup.Minivan.