Contents Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................................. xiii Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1 The world of rules .......................................................................................... 1 1.1 What is a business rule? ............................................................................................ 1 1.1.1 Laws of physics................................................................................................ 2 1.1.2 Legislation, regulations, external standards, and best practices ..................... 2 1.1.3 Rule or business rule? ...................................................................................... 3 1.1.4 System rule or business rule? .......................................................................... 3 1.2 Why rules are important ............................................................................................ 4 1.3 Best practice rule management.................................................................................. 5 1.4 The nature of the problem ......................................................................................... 6 1.5 The solutions .............................................................................................................. 8 1.5.1 Constrained natural language........................................................................... 8 1.5.2 The benefits of a rule repository ................................................................... 10 1.5.3 The benefits of rule metadata ........................................................................ 10 1.6 Summary................................................................................................................... 11 CHAPTER 2 How rules work ............................................................................................ 13