Key concepts

The following key concepts must be understood for you to use Advanced Business Rules through WebSphere® Operational Decision Manager integration.

Decision types: Advanced Business Rules through WebSphere Operational Decision Manager integration supports specifications of different types of decisions for which a product in the IBM® Product Master might associate with rules in WebSphere Operational Decision Manager. Each decision type represents a particular business level question that might be asked at the time of rule execution. For example: Eligibility decision type This decision type asks the question: "Can this product be offered to this customer". Pricing decision type This decision type asks the question: "How much discount can be offered to this customer for this product".
Decisions: A decision is a set of rules in WebSphere Operational Decision Manager that is associated with an item or a category in the IBM Product Master for a decision type.
Rule projects: Items or categories in the IBM Product Master associate with a rule project in the WebSphere Operational Decision Manager for each decision type. Rule Projects in the WebSphere Operational Decision Manager contain rules, rule templates, and other artifacts such as rule flows. Advanced Business Rules requires a rule project to be used for only one decision type. Each rule project can initially contain a set of rules applicable to a set of items or categories in the IBM Product Master for a decision type. This set of rules are considered “common rules” for all products that use the rule project and are not changeable in the context of an individual item or category. Additionally, each rule project contains a set of defined rule templates. The templates can be used by a content author in the IBM Product Master to create a new rule for the item or category. All rules in the rule projects that are used by items or categories in the IBM Product Master are required to have a custom property to store the entity identifier for the rule. The name of this custom property must be provided in the wodm-config.xml configuration file. The rule package that is identified in the decision type entry in the WODM Integration Lookup Table must: exist in the rule projects, and is used when you create new rules for the decision type. The rule project can contain a rule flow that uses dynamic queries to select rules that are applicable to a specific item or category. The specific item or category then uses a custom property on the rules.
Rules: Advanced Business Rules for the IBM Product Master allows working with both action rules and decision table type rules in WebSphere Operational Decision Manager. Advanced Business Rules support the notion of common rules for all entities (items or categories) in the IBM Product Master. Common rules apply to all entities that associate to a rule project for a decision type. Common rules must be created through the WebSphere Operational Decision Manager tools and be viewed only from the IBM Product Master user interface. Entity-specific rules can be viewed, created, edited, and deleted through the IBM Product Master user interface. These rules apply only to a specific item or category. A rule project can contain only rules for the IBM Product Master items or categories from a single catalog or hierarchy. New rules are created under the rule package whose name is identified in the lookup table entry for the decision type. This top-level rule package name exists in the rule project that is being used. The rules for each product are placed under a different sub package. This sub package is automatically created if it already does not exist. Placing entity-specific rules in individual sub packages provides them their own namespace, allowing the rule with same rule name to exist for different entities.
Note: If you select Greek or Turkish for the IBM Product Master user interface, the header and buttons of the WebSphere Operational Decision Manager Edit rule window display information in Greek or Turkish. However, the rule conditions, tooltips, and number of lines to display are displayed in English because the WebSphere Operational Decision Manager server messages are not translated into these languages.
Branches: The Advanced Business Rules integration edits the item or category-specific rules on a development branch in the rule project. The branch created the rule project through the Decision Center tools. The name of the branch to be used for editing the item or category-specific rules must be specified in the $TOP/etc/default/wodm/wodm-config.xml configuration file. When you list rules for the item or category in an IBM Product Master workflow step, the IBM Product Master works with the development branch. When you list rules for the item or category in an IBM Product Master catalog or hierarchy, IBM Product Master displays the rules on the main branch. The common rules are retrieved from the main branch irrespective of whether the item or category is in the catalog or the workflow.
Workflows: Advanced Business Rules integration allows authoring of rules only in an IBM Product Master. The workflow that is used for enrichment of item or category information can be enhanced to also include steps for editing and approving rules for the item or category. Extra steps are needed to enable a workflow to edit rules through the Advanced Business Rules.