Training offering

Authoring Rules in IBM WebSphere Operational Decision Management V8

Overview

This course introduces business users to IBM WebSphere Operational Decision Management V8. In this course, you learn the concepts and skills that you need to author, update, and maintain business rules with WebSphere Operational Decision Management.

Through instructor-led presentations and hands-on lab exercises, you learn about the core features of WebSphere Decision Center, which is the primary working environment for business users.

After an overview of Operational Decision Management and the underlying technical features that support rule authoring, the course provides an in-depth look at rule authoring in Decision Center. A realistic case study is used throughout the course to demonstrate how to transform business policies into formal rules. You closely examine the business case study and its underlying business object model (BOM) to understand how the BOM is reflected in the rule editors. You also learn how to write rules in Decision Center, including the Decision Center Business Console, which is new to version 8. The hands-on exercises prepare you for the type of questions and issues that can arise while authoring and maintaining complex and evolving business decisions.

In addition, the course covers Decision Center management features such as queries, analysis, and reporting. You also work with tests and simulations to validate rule behavior.

Note: Decision Center is used as the primary authoring tool throughout this course. However, skills that are mastered in this course are easily transferable to authoring rules in Rule Designer.

The lab environment for this course uses the Windows platform.

For information about other related courses, visit the IBM Training website:
http://www.ibm.com/training

Public

This intermediate course is for policy managers and rule authors.

Prerequisits

You should have:

• experience with identifying and defining business policies and rules

Objective

• Describe the benefits of implementing an Operational Decision Management solution, and the collaboration that is required between the business and development teams
• Identify the key user roles that are involved in designing and developing an Operational Decision Management solution, and the tasks that are associated with each role
• Explain the underlying technical aspects of Operational Decision Management that make rule authoring possible, including the association between the business object model (BOM) and the vocabulary that is used in rules
• Use the Operational Decision Management rule editors to author business rules and decision tables by using the vocabulary and business terms that are associated with the underlying object model
• Use Business Action Language (BAL) to develop appropriate condition and action statements
• Define and use variables to simplify rule authoring and readability
• Use query features to locate and modify rule artifacts, run semantic queries, analyze rules, and generate reports
• Run tests and simulations in Decision Center to validate decision logic and rule changes

Topics

• Course introduction
• Introducing IBM WebSphere Operational Decision Management V8
• Operational Decision Management: Business rules
• Exercise: WebSphere Operational Decision Management in action
• Foundations of rule authoring
• Introducing rule authoring
• Introducing Decision Center: Enterprise Console and Business Console
• Exercise: Exploring Decision Center Enterprise Console and Business Console
• Exercise: Understanding the case study
• Working with conditions in rules
• Exercise: Working with conditions in rules
• Working with definitions in rules
• Exercise: Working with definitions in rules
• Writing complete rules
• Exercise: Writing complete rules
• Authoring decision tables and trees
• Exercise: Authoring decision tables and trees
• Exercise: Authoring rules: Putting it all together
• Reviewing rules
• Exercise: Reviewing rules
• Running tests and simulations with Decision Validation Services
• Exercise: Running tests and simulations
• Course summary