Exporting rules and decision tables for use in Rule Designer

You can export a set of action rules and decision rules from the Process Designer to create a project file that you can then import and work on in IBM® Operational Decision Manager (ODM) Rule Designer.

About this task

The Process Designer provides the capability to express decision logic using action rules and decision tables . In most cases, business rules can be fully developed and implemented using the Process Designer. However, in a situation where you need to use the decision logic beyond your BPM process applications, or you need a rules capability that exceeds what is supported within Business Automation Workflow, you can export the decision logic without modifications to IBM ODM Rule Designer. The export procedure produces a complete project that is suitable for continued work within IBM ODM. After exporting the rules and decision tables, importing them into Rule Designer, and deploying them on a Rule Execution Server, the process application in the Process Designer can consume the resulting decision service that is provided by the remote (or external) IBM ODM.

Procedure

To export a rule project file that contains a single rule or multiple rules, complete these steps:

  1. In the Process Designer, open a process application in the Designer view.
  2. Make sure that you are working in the service flow that contains the decision that you want to export.
  3. Select the Decision tab. A list of decisions is displayed.
  4. Select the decision that you want to export.
  5. Click Export.
  6. Depending on your browser configuration, if you see the Save As window, navigate to the location where you want to save the exported project file, and enter a name for the export file, then click Save.

Results

The export function produces a project file with a .zip extension.

What to do next

After you have exported rules and decision tables from Business Automation Workflow and imported the project into IBM ODM Rule Designer, you can discover that decision service and create an external service. Then you can use that external service in a service task of your service flow to invoke the external IBM ODM decision service.