Skip to main content

Why Business Rules Engine Matter


"A good DSL minimizes the 'communication gap' between a domain concept and the code that implements it" - Robert C. Martin

A Use Case

It looks like adopting a new technology is always driven by a business need.

The organizations, such as banks, have their own business processes (such as data gathering and document management). These processes are different from others but usually the differences are not big. How do we build a product which can be reused the similar features but still be adaptable with the specific requirements of each bank? Then, the answer is we should have a library/framework. There is an idea that we can implement this library/framework by using a business rules engine. Which has the following benefits:
  • Be able to modify implementation of business domain at runtime (such as XML, CSV)
  • Source code is more readable for both developers and domain experts. Therefore, source code can be consider it as a document

Since Business Rules Engines support for Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs)

"The purpose of Business Rules Engines is to define a representation of business logic in as human readable fashion as possible. This allows both subject matter experts and developers to work with and understand the same representation of the business logic." [3]

Then, why DSLs?

"A good DSL minimizes the "communication gap" between a domain concept and the code that implements it, just as agile practices optimize the communications within a team and with the project's stakeholders."
- Uncle Bob

"A well-chosen DSL can make it easier to understand a complicated block of code, thus improving the productivity of those working with it. It can also make it easier to communicate with domain experts, by providing a common text that acts as both executable software and a description that domain experts can read to understand how their ideas are represented in a system."
- Martin Flower

Should we use Business Rules Engines for manipulating the Graphical User Interface (GUI)?

The answer is: why not? This is a big idea and I've once mentioned about it at this post. However, I have experienced some issues:
  • I have to make requests from client to server whenever I need a business decision. There are some cases unnecessarily to call the server such as client side validation (imagine you say a field is mandatory, for example). Sine we always consider the performance issues.
  • The huge effort will be spent for complexity of building the stable framework for handling the communication between business rules and GUI. For instance, working with the component with a list of items such as table, list, so on.
How do you think? Leave your comments down below!

References:
[1]. Robert C.Martin, Clean Code, A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, Chapter 11 - System.
[2]. Martin Flower, Domain-Specific Languages
[3]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain-specific_language
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MS SQL Server Views

"Creates a virtual table whose contents (columns and rows) are defined by a query. Use this statement to create a view of the data in one or more tables in the database. For example, a view can be used for the following purposes: - To focus, simplify, and customize the perception each user has of the database. - As a security mechanism by allowing users to access data through the view, without granting the users permissions to directly access the underlying base tables. - To provide a backward compatible interface to emulate a table whose schema has changed." [1] Beside that, our team used view in order to improve the performance of our web apps when a database has a very complicated relationship between its tables by using ORM Frameworks such as Hibernate. Example code: --create CREATE VIEW placeholders AS SELECT EMPKEY AS empkey, CONNUMB AS connumb, EMPNBR AS empNbr, ACEEMPN AS empFirstName, ACEEMPFN AS empLastName, EMPNAM AS empFullName, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

If We Want to Go Fast, We Need to Go Well

Have you ever thought that we won't need to code anymore because programs might be generated from specification? The answer can be yes or no; there is still arguing about it. The programming language is more and more closed to the requirements. The starting is from a very low level as Assembly to a very high level like Python. However, it doesn't make much sense when saying that we will eliminate coding. For me, we currently still need to express our ideas in exact words that tells the machine what we want. Otherwise, I hope in the future the machine is intelligent enough to understand our requirements directly from our words. ;) Take a look at the famous quote of Robert C.Martin about what I mentioned above: "Remember that code is really the language in which we ultimately express the requirements. We may create languages that are closer to the requirements. We may create tools that help us parse and assemble those requirements into formal structures. But we wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Make simple music program with beep(freq, duration) with Pascal

Pascal is my first programing language when I have studied in high school. It was really exciting for me. :) The Pascal programming language was created by Niklaus Wirth in 1970. It was named after Blaise Pascal, a famous French Mathematician. It was made as a language to teach programming and to be reliable and efficient. Pascal has since become more than just an academic language and is now used commercially . I tried to make a simple music program by using Lazarus IDE on MS Window 7, 64-bit. It frustrated me a few times how difficulty to use Sound command to make a sound. Sound did not work on my compiler and my platform anymore. So far, I just could use beep(freq, duration) from window unit to implement my work. Here is my code. ;) program mysong; uses Windows, crt; const C: Integer = 512; { x = A * EXP(LN(2)/12)} C_: Integer = 542; D: Integer = 574; D_: Integer = 608; E: Integer = 644; F: Integer = 682; F_: Integer = 723; G: Integer = ...
Post a Comment
Read more

My must-have apps for daily work

There is no doubt that cool apps can help us be more productive and enjoyable at work. For the time being, I really love the following apps which are used by me almost every day. 1. A personal Kanban In fact, a personal kanban is the most useful app for me. Why does it matter? It is not just a to-do list, but it keeps me motivated every day because it helps me be able to know what my "big picture" is. I usually set up my plans together with a path to reach them.  KanbanFlow  is my preferred tool. KanbanFlow 2. A terminal Needless to say, a terminal is a must-have app for every developer, especially the ones use macOS/Linux. Due to its importance, I love to decorate and enhance it to be super exciting with various tools such as  iTerm ,  oh-my- zsh , and  thefuck . ;) iTerm + oh-my-zsh 3. A documentation "ecosystem" As a developer, I can not remember all things that I have experimented a day. Moreover, a document is really useful for sharing an...
Post a Comment
Read more