Principles of the Business Rule Approach

by Ronald G. Ross

Business Rules are an approach that offers a fundamental competitive edge to a business. They allow an IT department to be used more effectively in solving business problems and are particularly... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201788934
• ISBN13: 9780201788938
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Business Rule Approach Review

It took a while to ship the book, but once shipped it reached me in no time. Very satisfied with the service.

An introduction to business rules as a way to think about business

This book is one of the classics on business rules from one of the most long-standing authors in the area, Ron Ross. The book is a little more than three years old but, as it is not really focused on technology for managing business rules so much as the general approach, it has aged well. Ron does a good job explaining what business rules and how to capture them and gives a solid overview of things like fact models, processes and how they relate to rules, and dos and don'ts of rule writing. There is a lot in the book about his particular approach to writing rules which, whether you follow it or not, has some good advice about usage and style for writing declarative business rules. The book does not go into details on the technology of implementing business rules using a business rules management system but instead focuses on the value of an approach that separates business rules from other kinds of requirements and manages those rules as an asset. A good book to introduce the subject to someone without a technology bent.

A primary resource from one of the industry experts

This book is probably the most important of the handful of business rules literature available. Not only is the author is one of the true experts in the field who is a prolific writer of articles on the topic as well as co-developer of related tools, but the book is the most comprehensive work on the nuts and bolts of employing business rules.The book is divided into five parts, starting with background, definitions and cases in Part I. Concepts and the mechanics of business rules covered in Part II cover the basics in considerable detail, which are built upon in Part III, Best Practices for Expressing Rules. This part is the meat of the book. It starts with a list of dos and don'ts for rule capture and documentation, then introduces "BRS Rulespeak", which is a set of formal rules and approach for identifying, classifying, and expressing business rules. Part IV is a somewhat loose collection of advice for IT professionals (bearing in mind that business rules span both the IT and business domains), and to a minor degree delves into data models, knowledge management and how business rules directly link to business imperatives and processes. Part V digs deeply into formal logic and facts, and is an important part of this book for the practitioner. I especially liked the appendices to this part because they went even deeper into formal methods.Although I rate this book the highest among the three I own on the subject, if you are only exploring business rules the best place to start before reading this book is Tony Morgan's "Business Rules and Information Systems: Aligning IT with Business Goals"(ISBN 0201743914). Also, Barbara Von Halle's "Business Rules Applied: Building Better Systems Using the Business Rules Approach" (ISBN 0471412937) is a worthwhile resource to be used in conjunction with this book because goes deeper into the practical aspects of implementing business rules as an enterprise initiative.

Best Frist Book on Business Rules

This is the place to get started with the business rules approach. I've read several other books on the subject, including Ross's earlier works, and Barbara vanHalle's, but this is the one that brings it all together. He makes the case much more compellingly for why we need the business rules approach, and then sets up a great framework for understanding how to express and organize the rule base. This is not AI style rules, and he makes it clear what the differences are. High level assertions are backed up with theoretcial underpinnings. The book is kept easy to read with lots of illustrations and side bars with amusing rules encountered in everyday life.