Application of a decision support mechanism to the business rules lifecycle

Decision structures have been proposed in a number of contexts an knowledge-based software engineering as an important mechanism for recording and reasoning about the information needed to make decisions during the software lifecycle. We apply decision structures to a new domain, namely that of the business rules of an enterprise. Given the dynamic nature of business rules, decision structures are seen to be an appropriate framework to record and evolve business rules. The paper describes how to combine decision structures and business rules within a conceptual modeling framework. An architecture is presented that addresses business rules throughout the operational lifetime of the systems they govern.