IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Programming IBM BPM > Business rule management programming > Programming model
Business Rule
The RuleSet and DecisionTable classes are based off a generic BusinessRule class with methods that provide information that is available on both rule sets and decision tables.
Similar to business rule group artifacts, rule sets and decision tables have a name and a target namespace. The combination of these values must be unique when compared to other rule sets and decision tables.
For example, two rule sets can share the same target namespace value, but must have different names or a rule set and decision table could have the same name, but have different target namespace values.
A copy of a business rule can be made from an existing business rule for situations where a similar rule is required to be scheduled at a specific time with different parameter values for rules constructed from templates. New rules cannot be fully created from scratch as there must be a backing Java™ class to provide the implementation for the business rule. The backing Java class is only created at deploy time. When a new rule is created, it is added to the list of available targets for the operation which is associated with the original rule. The additional rule is not persisted however, until the business rule group with which the operation is associated is published.
The new business rule must have either a different target namespace or name from the original rule. The display name for the new business rule can remain the same as the original rule as the combination of the name and namespace provide a key value to identify the business rule. Within the business rule, the different parameter values which have been defined with a template can be modified. Scheduling the business rule at a certain time can be done with the OperationSelectionRecordList or as a default destination with the Operation associated with the business rule.
The BusinessRule class provides methods that support the following:
- Retrieve the target namespace
- Retrieve the name of the rule set or decision table
- Retrieve and set the display name of the rule set or decision table
- Retrieve the type of the business rule, either rule set or decision table
- Retrieve and set the description for the business rule
- Retrieve the operation that the business rule is associated with.
- Create a copy of the business rule with a different name, target namespace, or both
Figure 1. Class diagram of BusinessRule and related classes
