CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rule-enginebusiness-rules
user766279
user766279

Reputation:

Alternatives to decision table

Our app is growing rapidly. So, I begun looking into business rules as a way to separate some of our logic from the code (big DAAAH ;). The main goal is to allow our business guys to edit and deploy rules without recompiling anything (another big DAAAH). So far, I could only find references to "decision tables" as a way for business to manage rules. The thing is that I tried to introduce the concept of decision tables to our business and got a very "mixed" response, to say the least :) In short, they don't want to understand them. Question: is there an alternative to decision tables? Something that is easier to understand for sales people?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2600

Answers (2)

user747892
user747892

Reputation: 76

Usually the rules like the one that you presented in your question go in clusters, such as

  1. if Price < 100 then Run
  2. if Price == 100 then Buy
  3. if Price > 100 and < 120 then Wait
  4. if Price >= 120 then Sell

There is easily to put this logic in a decision table with just 2 headers Price and Action. Most of the modern rule engines have support for this kind of decision tables. The experience shows that business users have no problems to understand such tables

Upvotes: 0

Kizz
Kizz

Reputation: 799

I think there is only one alternative to decision tables - decision trees. Some guys also call them "flow charts", I think. I know several commercial tools that present UI as trees to let users "build" rules with drag-n-drop. Internally though, they convert those trees into decision tables or similarly structured objects when you save rules as files.

Upvotes: 1

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