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

Comments

The HelloWorld example of JSF 2.2 with Myfaces

I just did by myself create a very simple app "HelloWorld" of JSF 2.2 with a concrete implementation Myfaces that we can use it later on for our further JSF trying out. I attached the source code link at the end part. Just follow these steps below: 1. Create a Maven project in Eclipse (Kepler) with a simple Java web application archetype "maven-archetype-webapp". Maven should be the best choice for managing the dependencies , so far. JSF is a web framework that is the reason why I chose the mentioned archetype for my example. 2. Import dependencies for JSF implementation - Myfaces (v2.2.10) into file pom.xml . The following code that is easy to find from http://mvnrepository.com/ with key words "myfaces". <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core</groupId> <artifactId>myfaces-api</artifactId> <version>2.2.10</version> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.apache.myfaces.core<...

Styling Sort Icons Using Font Awesome for Primefaces' Data Table

So far, Primefaces has used image sprites for displaying the sort icons. This leads to a problem if we want to make a different style for these icons; for example, I would make the icon "arrow up" more blurry at the first time the table loading because I want to highlight the icon "arrow down". I found a way that I can replace these icons with Font Awesome icons. We will use "CSS Pseudo-classes" to achieve it. The hardest thing here is that we should handle displaying icons in different cases. There is a case both "arrow up" and "arrow down" showing and other case is only one of these icons is shown. .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s { background-image: none; margin-left: 5px; font-size: 1.1666em; position: relative; } .ui-sortable-column-icon.ui-icon.ui-icon-carat-2-n-s:not(.ui-icon-triangle-1-s)::before { content: "\f106"; font-family: "FontAwesome"; position: ...

Performance of a Data Structure

Why data structures matter The fact is that programs are all about processing data. Data structures are referred to how data is organized which affects the time of executing a program. How to measure the performance of a data structure In order to measure "how fast"/efficiency/performance of a data structure, we measure the performance of its operations. There are four basic operations including reading , searching , insertion , and deletion . A pure time consuming is not used for the measuring because it is not reliable depending on the hardware that it is run on. But instead, we use the term time complexity which refers to how many steps an operation takes. An example of how a single rule can affect efficiency Let's compare two data structures: Array and Set (with N elements). 1. Array - Reading : 1 step (because the computer has the ability to jump to any particular index in the array) - Searching : N steps (the worst case with linear search) - Inserti...

Fulfilling Your Contribution Needs

Human resource management motivation Managing human today is quite different from the industrial age which treats people as just "chickens". Rather than people now are very important to the success of an organization. People are an organization's special resource. They should be encouraged to grow to contribute their effort and creativeness to their beloved working environment because the contribution is one of their most needs in life. Training people: getting rid of the ineffective model and adopting the new one The ineffective model of training people: Hiring new people --> giving them a crash course once --> expecting them working effectively. That somehow makes sense but you're about to expect a luck because you do not really spend your effort for mentoring them. If they can work effectively, well...lucky you! Otherwise, you will blame that these people are ineffective and you let them go and hire the new ones. What a waste of time! The new effe...

Template Method Pattern: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You!

So far, the Template Method has been my most used design pattern. That is the reason why this post is quite long. J Definition from Wiki The Template Method defines the program skeleton of an algorithm in a method, deferring some steps to subclasses. It lets one redefine certain steps of an algorithm without changing the algorithm's structure. A Real World Use Case Imagine that you have many different kinds of documents. You want to generate a pdf file from a corresponding word template. Each type has its own small modifications but the main process for document generating is the same. We apply the Template Method for this case. We define a final method including some steps (such as preparing for content, generating file) at a superclass. There are three possibilities for these steps at subclasses: Must be overridden: abstract methods. Not mandatory to be overridden: default protected methods. Can not be overridden: default private methods. Dissecting the Patt...

vhandit

Search This Blog