Declaring and managing dependencies

Declaring dependencies lets you reuse decision artifacts within a decision service.

Automation Decision Services allows you to reuse decision artifacts throughout a decision service. For example, you can use the output of a decision model in another decision model, or use the vocabulary defined in a data model in multiple other decision artifacts.

Declaring dependencies

Some dependencies are automatically declared when reusing decision artifacts:

When adding function nodes in decision models. For more information, see Calling other models.
When adding function task nodes in task models. For more information, see Adding a function task node.
When selecting a data model at the creation of a decision model, task model, or predictive model. For more information, see Using data models in other decision artifacts.

Other dependencies need to be manually declared before you can reuse a decision artifact:

When reusing data types from a data model in another data model. For more information, see Using data models in other decision artifacts.
When using data types from an external library in a decision artifact. For more information, see Using an external library in a decision service.

Ordering dependencies

The order in which the dependencies of a decision artifact is displayed in the Dependencies tab determines how ambiguities between data types are resolved.

For example, if a decision model has a dependency on two data models that contain data types with the same fully qualified name, data types from the data model that is listed higher will be used in priority.

To reorder dependencies, use the up and down arrows located next to each dependency.

Removing dependencies

Important: When deleting a function node in a decision model or a function task node in a task model, the dependency to the reused model is not automatically removed. It needs to be removed manually, as described below.

You can remove a dependency between two decision artifacts from the Dependencies tab:

Open the source decision artifact, that is the decision artifact that reuses another one.
Go to the Dependencies tab.
Browse to the dependency that you want to remove and click the Remove icon.