Business Glossary

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What is a Business Glossary?

A business glossary is a dictionary that defines all the business terminologies. A business terminology (i.e., Term) is a word or set of words that have a meaning in your business domain. The main benefit of using a Business Glossary is the reusability of business definitions (i.e., Terms) so that you can reuse all the terms in different glossaries with different logic (e.g., business rules documents).

For example in the insurance industry:

• Car
• Car Price
• High-Risk Cars List
• …

are terms in that domain.

Terms are a fundamental part of your business language – they have a Domain (type) and an Expression associated with them. Once the terms are defined within the business glossary they can be used throughout the following rule documents:

1. Decision Table
2. Natural Language

Business Terms for execution must have their expression defined. But for modeling purposes only, you can skip defining their expressions and leave that for later. The Terms’ expression can be based on the rule or logic context. The context of a logic or rule document is defined by its input and output parameters.

When a business person and a technical person work together
If you have a technical person creating the decision tables and a business person customizing the rules and adding values, having a business glossary will be very important as it will interpret business terms into technical terms and vice versa.

Business Glossary

To add a new Business Glossary document,

Document Types --> Business Concept --> Business Terms

Once you added a term, this will be the window.

Business Glossary Properties

1. Name: Name of the glossary
2. Types Definition: List of Types and Functions
3. Variable Definition: Define variables to be used in the glossary

Toolbox

It will only have one item which is Term.

Top Menu

At the top menu, you can see the following items.

1. Add New Term: Adding new terms to the glossary
2. Delete a Term: Deleting a term from the glossary
3. Find Term Usages: Find the usage of a term in a project
4. Properties: Properties of the glossary
5. Filter: Search a term in the glossary
6. Add Synonym or Translation:  A different language can be selected from the list to add as a translation or add a synonym
   

Term Properties

If you click on the Domain of a term, the term property window will appear.

1. Expression: Expression of the term
2. Term: Name of the term
3. Domain Type: Type of the term (String, Numeric, Date time, Boolean, Range, Options)
4. Dynamic Options: If you want to select the options from a database, add a Connection String and Query.
5. List of Options: If you select ‘Options’ as ‘Domain Type’ options have to be defined here. Option values can be added as a list/ imported from a Fact Concept.
   

Referencing Glossary

1. Once a business glossary is created, open the natural language/ decision table you want to use the business glossary terms
2. Click on the Properties icon to view the property window.
3. Click on Glossaries in the Properties window.
   
4. Add the Glossary.
   

Referencing a glossary term

Decision Table

1. Open the decision table you want to use a glossary term.
2. Refer to the glossary.
3. Select a column.
4. Under Properties window –> Value, you will see a property called ‘Term’ which will load all the linked (i.e., referenced) glossaries in the document (e.g., the Decision Table).
   
5. Instead of setting the Expression property, you can select a Term from the drop-down menu.
   

Natural Language

Similar to the decision table referencing, the ‘Term’ property is available under the Properties window.

Press Control + Space on the keyboard and the options can be viewed.

Video Description

Sample Business Glossary

A sample business glossary can be downloaded from the attachments at the end of this page.