Check Consistency and Correctness

Even with well planned and executed testing many of the faults in software centric systems are found at run-time by users. This is also true with decisions and business rules and it is not until, the wrong information is sent to the wrong customers or a security device allows access to a request that should have been blocked, that we know that something has gone wrong.

Decisions and the logic that describes them is often complex and hard for humans to grapple with. This situation is compounded because decisions are commonly connected together in a graph creating an interwoven fabric where one decision depends on three others which in turn depend on others and so on.

Enterprise Architect implementation of the DMN standard makes it easy to visualize and collaborate together defining and automating a set of decisions. The rules can be defined and displayed in the expression editor manifested in Decision Tables that resemble spreadsheets which will be familiar and reassuring to business analysts and other business stakeholders. The rules defined in these tables can be checked for consistency and correctness alerting the analyst to problems of missing or overlapping conditions and other issues.

The tool that performs the validation is conveniently built into the Decision Table window and means that the problems can be resolved early in the process long before they get enshrined in programming code and reach the customer.