Overview of testing in Rule Designer

Rule Designer provides launch configurations to run usage scenarios to test and debug the correctness of a ruleset.

The launch configurations submit your scenarios to a Scenario Service Provider (SSP), which returns a report of the results of rule execution on the scenarios.

You can run tests or debug using the local SSP, or run tests remotely to check that the connection to Rule Execution Server is working and that the XOMs are accessible to the remote SSP.

Note: You can only test decision operations locally.

If the tests show errors or do not match the expected results, you can debug in Rule Designer using a local SSP by stepping into the rules, adding breakpoints, and inspecting the variables to identify the problem.

Note: To use the DVS launch configurations, make sure that you have installed the Rule Execution Server component.

The steps required to create and run the launch configurations for testing are described in Testing rules with a local or remote SSP. Launch configurations are built on the regular Eclipse Run > Run Configurations and Run > Debug Configurations features. The following figure shows a Launch Configuration to test a rule project against a scenario file in Excel:

Rule Designer provides different types of launch configurations:

DVS Excel File

DVS Excel files contain your scenarios in one of the default Excel formats. You must first obtain this file from the business user, or generate it (see Generating an Excel scenario file) and enter the data for your scenarios (see Excel scenario files).

DVS Decision Operation

The DVS Decision Operations launch configuration is used to run tests locally on decision operations, using the Excel 2007 Tabbed format to store your scenarios. The DVS Format tab in this launch configuration is used to enter the precision required when comparing actual and expected results, as well as the location of the output values file. This file contains the values of the input and output parameters before and after execution of the rules. These values are useful for troubleshooting or to help you to complete the expected results.

DVS Archive

DVS archives are generated in the Decision Center Enterprise console by business users when the results of their testing is not what they expected and they cannot identify or solve the problem themselves. A DVS archive contains the ruleset, the format, and the Excel scenario file or the custom scenario provider.

Business users can download the DVS archive from the Enterprise console and send it to the developers for debugging in Rule Designer.

Note: When you create a custom format for your scenarios, you can also create a customized plug-in project for your launch configuration.

You indicate the location of your scenarios (DVS archive or Excel file in your workspace) in the first tab of the launch configuration, as well as the rule project or decision operation to test and the location where the generated report is saved.

The launch configuration has two other tabs worth mentioning, but do not apply to decision operations:

The Extraction tab, to run your tests on a subset of the rules in the rule project based on ruleset extractors (see Extracting a rules for a ruleset).
The DVS Configuration tab, to run your tests on a remote server to check that Rule Execution Server is responding and that the XOM is accessible to the SSP. If you select remote testing, you must specify a DVS Project and a Configuration in the DVS Project. The configuration contains the credentials and URL of the remote SSP. You can also select whether you want to use the XOM deployed to Rule Execution Server to run your tests.

Note: If you do not use the XOM deployed in Rule Execution Server, you must repackage the SSP with the XOM.

The following figure shows the workflow to test a rule project in Rule Designer:

When troubleshooting testing problems reported in Decision Center, make sure you synchronize the rule projects first.

After you have identified the problem:

If the problems are related to the rules, synchronize any changes back to Decision Center.
If the problems are in the Excel scenario file, correct the data and send it back to the business user.