Validating a Document

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Validation

Validating rules would allow you to find possible potential problems with rules at design time. These problems include:

• Structural issues
• Missing values or elements
• Rules overlap

Result Panel

Click on the validation icon on the toolbar.

Or you can go to Document --> Validate the Current Document from the menu bar.

Then the result of validation will appear on the Messages pane:

In the Message List pane, you have to tick the validation message options you want to see.

The message list then shows all of the related information regarding the rule document validation. There are different message types:

1. Information: Just information regarding the validation process
2. Warning: There are some issues with documents, but they are minor.
3. Error: The document is invalid, and should be fixed.
4. Analysis
   1. Conflicting Rules: Detect conflicting rules such as rules with the same conditions.
   2. Missing Rules: Detect the missing rules when the condition is defined as a Business Glossary option list and all the options are not presented in the Decision Table

Finding the Issues

On the message list, when you double click on an error, it redirects you to the specific element in the document which is causing the problem, so you can find it easily. Then check the error message – it is probably referring to a missing property or invalid configuration of a set of properties. These can be fixed in the Properties window.

Decision Table

Overlaps

When modeling business rules, one of the ways to implement rules is by using Decision Tables. Decision Tables are a compact way of presenting rules conditions and actions in tabular form.

In the Decision Table below we have organized the conditions, action, and name of the rule in columns. Each row represents a business rule. When a column in a rule is empty, it means that the condition (in the column) does not participate in the rule (in the row).

Let’s see how we can translate row number 8:

Rule R5: 
IF
  Is Car New is false AND
  Car Age < 6
THEN
  Auto Premium += 400

In a Decision Table, identifying business rule conflict is not difficult if it is a small table, or the expression values are simple, but when it gets complex, finding business rule conflict is not that easy!

Validation of a Decision Table identifies any conflict of rules. In this example, three rule overlaps have been identified, and if you look at the values closely you notice for example that a ‘car age’ with the value of ‘5’ will result in the execution of all four rules: R5, R6, R7, and R8 (i.e., row number #5 #6 #7 #8).

To view this Rule Overlap: Conflicting Rules must be selected under the Analysis tab in following window.