Rule verification

Basic syntax checks

Decision Center verifies the syntax of business rules. When you save a rule, Decision Center displays any errors or warnings that result from checking the syntax. If a rule contains a syntax error, the administrator excludes it from the ruleset that is deployed to the production system.

Decision Center checks for the following syntax errors:

• Unrecognizable or invalid rule statement

• Ambiguous rule statement with more than one correct interpretation

• Repeated or wrong variable in the definitions part

• Incomplete rule with empty placeholders

• No if part in a rule with an else part

For a full list, see the Rule Designer online help.

Decision table checks

You can check decision tables for overlaps, gaps, and symmetry.

Overlap checks

You can set Decision Center to check that your decision tables do not contain duplicated values.

For example, in the following condition statements, customers who are 29 or 30 years old satisfy both rules:

• Age is between 17 and 30

• Age is between 29 and 40

If these two conditions are in the same column or within a partitioned groups of cells in a decision table, Decision Center signals an overlap error.

Gap checks

You can set Decision Center to check that the values you enter in your decision tables consider all possible cases. This ensures that there are no gaps in your conditions.

For example, the following condition statements do not include customers who are 31 years old:

• Age is between 17 and 30

• Age is between 32 and 40

Decision Center reports a gap error.

Symmetry checks

You can set Decision Center to check that all the partitions in a decision table use the same set of items. You can verify the symmetry of the entire table or specified columns. This analysis helps ensure that you have covered all the possible choices in the decision table.

By default, symmetry analysis is turned off so that you can create nonsymmetrical tables.