ILOG JRules User Guide > Writing Rules > Getting Started > Overview: Ways of Expressing a Business Policy

In ILOG JRules, you can express a business policy using:

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Rule artifacts can be created and maintained in Rule Studio or Rule Team Server. The specific roles and activities for each module are described in:

Information provided in the following sections relates to how to create and edit rule artifacts in Rule Studio. For information on how to create and edit rule artifacts in Rule Team Server, refer to the Rule Team Server Online Help.

Business Rules

Business rules enable you express business policy statements using a predefined business vocabulary that can be interpreted by a computer.

For example, the policy "change customers in the Gold category to the Platinum category when they spend more than $1,500 in a single transaction" could be expressed as the following business rule:

if
   all of the following conditions are true:
      - the customer category is Gold
      - the value of the shopping cart is more than $ 1,500
then
   change the customer category to Platinum

Decision Tables and Decision Trees

Decision tables and decision trees provide a concise view of a set of business rules in the form of a spreadsheet or a tree. Spreadsheets and trees help you to navigate and manage large sets of business rules.

Decision tables are rules composed of rows and columns. They are used to display in tabular form all possible situations that a business decision may encounter, and to specify which action to take in each of these situations. Decision tables allow you to view and manage large sets of business rules with identical conditions.

Decision trees provide the same functionality, but are composed of branches that have a condition node as their root, and action nodes as their leaves. Decision trees enable you to manage a large set of rules with some conditions in common, but not all.

Technical Rules

Technical rules are rules written in the ILOG Rule Language (IRL), which is similar to Java code. They allow you to write specific loops in the action part of your rules.

Related Concepts

Anatomy of a Rule Artifact
Automatic Variables
Ruleset Variables
Business Rules
Decision Tables
Decision Trees
Technical Rules
Business Rule Templates
Business Rule Application Development

Related Tasks

Defining Ruleset Variables
Creating Business Rules
Working With Decision Tables
Working With Decision Trees
Refactoring Rule Artifacts
Defining a Category Filter on a Business Rule Artifact
Working with Technical Rules
Using a Custom Rule Type

Related Reference

Rule Languages

Related Samples and Tutorials

Tutorial: Creating Business Rules