The Case of a Graphical Environment Built for a Telco

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

The Case of a Graphical Environment Built for a Telco Empowering end-users to manage business rules: the case of a graphical environment built for a telco Catarina Ferreira da Silva1, Levi Baptista2, Paulo Rupino da Cunha3, Paulo Melo4 Abstract. We present GREAT (GRaphical tool for rules Editing and AudiTing), an approach and a tool for graphical business rules management that we designed and developed. This collaborative Web-based application with rich user interface enables easy creation and editing of business rules. Relevant features are (1) the ability to define templates of business rules with various levels of granularity and of rule elements, which can be further reused; (2) the ability to create configurable user profiles from a broad range of permissions, which combined with business rules templates, suits the tool to users with different goals and levels experience; (3) the automatic versioning of business rules. We validated our approach with re- al-world business rules provided by a telecommunications company. The easy to use graphical environment empowers the business experts to create the rules themselves, rather than having to resort to Information Technology professionals. Keywords Business rules, graphical editor, Drools, RIA, DRL 1C. Ferreira da Silva (*) Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC), Portugal e-mail: [email protected] 2L. Baptista Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] 3P. Rupino da Cunha CISUC, Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] 4P. Melo INESC Coimbra and University of Coimbra, Portugal e-mail:[email protected] J. Stjepandic´ et al. (eds.), Concurrent Engineering Approaches for Sustainable 1193 Product Development in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-4426-7_100, Ó Springer-Verlag London 2013 1194 C. Ferreira da Silva et al. 1 Introduction According to Jeng et al. (1), business rules are expressions that describe and con- trol the processes, operations and behaviour of how an enterprise, and the applica- tions that support it, perform. Rules define, constrain or validate some aspect of a system through the evaluation of conditions and context of the rule invoker. Busi- ness rules (BR) can evaluate if a certain condition is met to decide if a defined ac- tion should be taken by the system. BR can also be used in support of jeopardy management to prevent potential business failures. A business process manage- ment approach based on BR should include a management system of these rules in such a way to facilitate their administration and modification. One of the compo- nents of these systems is a tool enabling business experts (which may not be In- formation Technology experts) to design, modify and maintain BR. Creating and coding BR for the purpose of process automation are not easy tasks. Hence, it is important to provide business experts with graphical applica- tions for BR management. This way, they won’t have to rely on Information Technology (IT) experts and become free from the burden of understanding de- clarative BR languages used by those professionals. In this paper we present our approach to designing and developing a solution for BR management. It is based on a Web-based system with a rich user graphical interface in order to facilitate the tasks of business experts of creating and han- dling BR. Our solution handles the automatic translation of the graphical represen- tation of BR to code interpretable by the most popular open source BR engine (the Drools Expert rules engine). To support the choices made, our work includes the analysis of a set of tools claiming to provide graphical edition of BR and the anal- ysis of frameworks for development of rich internet applications. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 provides a short summary of the tools that provide graphical editing of BR. In section 3 we present our approach to the graphical management of BR, specify the requirements of the GREAT (GRaphical tool for rules Editing and AudiTing) tool, and explain its de- velopment approach. In section 4 we validate our work by modelling BR provided by a telecom company in our graphical environment and then generating the cor- responding executable code. In section 5 we briefly discuss advantages and limita- tions of our approach and we provide concluding remarks in section 6. 2 Graphical Editing Tools for Business Rules Usually, due to the specificity of the processes of defining and maintaining busi- ness rules (BR), those functions are carried out by experts in the IT area, instead of business experts. The desire to create a tool which would help this process, making it collaborative between specialists in different areas, and in which the Empowering end-users to manage business rules 1195 definition and design of BR would be really in charge of business professionals is not new. In our research for this project we have identified and compared three tools aiming at providing graphical editing of BR: the Drools Guvnor (2), the Mi- crosoft Business Rule Composer (3), and the Visual Rules WebModeler (VRWM) (4). One major characteristic of these tools is the obligation of using the Business Rules Management System specifically associated with each editing tool. Table 1 provides a comparison of the most important criteria and functionalities that we analysed. Table 1 Comparative table of analysed Business Rules editing tools BR tool Drools Visual Rules Microsoft Business Criteria Guvnor WebModeler Rule Composer Just the BRMS Just the Just the Visual integrated in the Mi- Supported BRMS Drools Rules proprietary crosoft BizTalk BRMS BRMS Server 2010 Versioning Yes Yes Yes Rules verification Yes Yes Yes Rules validation Yes Yes Yes Apache Commercial Li- License Software Li- Commercial License cense cense Web Application Yes Yes No “Desktop style” No Yes Yes Application User Authentication Yes Yes No Graphical representation of the No Yes No business rules Symbolical represen- tation of rules No Yes No operations Graphical edition of No Yes No business rules Drag-and-drop of No Yes Yes elements Among the analysed tools for editing BR, Visual Rules is the one with greater graphics capabilities and more intuitive features. It is the only tool that combines capabilities such as graphical representation of the rules, symbolic representation of the rules operations, and drag-and-drop of elements. The Microsoft Business Rule Composer (MBRC), although having features such as drag-and-drop of ele- ments, has no graphical representation of the rules or of the rule elements. In the 1196 C. Ferreira da Silva et al. Drools Guvnor tool, there is a total absence of graphical representation and rich user interaction functionalities. At the platform level, only the VRWM and the Drools Guvnor are web applica- tions, running on browsers. From these two, only the VRWM has graphics that look comparable to a desktop application. Regarding interoperability, none of the tools allows the export of the created business rules to a BRMS other than those to which they are associated. In terms of licensing, only the Drools Guvnor is open source, with the other tools being associated with commercial licenses. Versioning of the BR is supported by all four tools, though in different ways. The MBRC allows the user to create multiple versions of a project (set of rules), but not keeping any additional information associated with them (such as ra- tionale, author, or creation date). When created, the new version is empty, and it is the user that must copy the old rules or create new rules. The Drools Guvnor lets the user store a copy of the current status of the project. Along with the copy it saves the creation date and comments. In VRWM this feature is not managed at the level of graphical editor, but rather at the Visual Rules BR repository. It offers the possibility of creating a new full copy of a certain rules project and modifying it to create a new version. Information such as author and creation date is regis- tered. All tools allow the user to view a history of versions available and to deploy of an earlier version (roll-back functionality). Our study revealed that, from these three tools, only the VRWM is a web tool with real graphics capabilities and intuitive features to assist the creation and maintenance of BR, bringing together features such as the graphic representation of BR, the symbolic representation of the BR elements and operations, and the drag-and-drop of elements. However, the VRWM tool has limitations regarding its interoperability with other BR tool types, as it does not allow the rules to be ex- ported to other rule execution engines besides its own proprietary system. This tool is also associated with an onerous commercial license. Other limitations are related to performance and fluidity of use, since the VRWM has noticeable wait- ing times when loading and updating rules. Its versioning system is not automatic, which can lead to loss if the user starts making changes without previously creat- ing a new version. 3 The GREAT business rules graphical editor Our approach to a BR graphical editor aims to help non-technical professionals, in the task of creating and maintaining BR, making this a collaborative process be- tween experts from different fields, which is not the current reality (5). It was de- cided to design a graphical BR editing environment with features that allow its uti- lization by professionals not specialized in IT, using open-source
Recommended publications
  • THE FUTURE of SCREENS from James Stanton a Little Bit About Me
    THE FUTURE OF SCREENS From james stanton A little bit about me. Hi I am James (Mckenzie) Stanton Thinker / Designer / Engineer / Director / Executive / Artist / Human / Practitioner / Gardner / Builder / and much more... Born in Essex, United Kingdom and survived a few hair raising moments and learnt digital from the ground up. Ok enough of the pleasantries I have been working in the design field since 1999 from the Falmouth School of Art and onwards to the RCA, and many companies. Ok. less about me and more about what I have seen… Today we are going to cover - SCREENS CONCEPTS - DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION - WHY ASSETS LIBRARIES - CODE LIBRARIES - COST EFFECTIVE SOLUTION FOR IMPLEMENTATION I know, I know, I know. That's all good and well, but what does this all mean to a company like mine? We are about to see a massive change in consumer behavior so let's get ready. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AS A USP Getting this correct will change your company forever. DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION USP-01 Digital transformation (DT) – the use of technology to radically improve performance or reach of enterprises – is becoming a hot topic for companies across the globe. VERY DIGITAL CHANGING NOT VERY DIGITAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION USP-02 Companies face common pressures from customers, employees and competitors to begin or speed up their digital transformation. However they are transforming at different paces with different results. VERY DIGITAL CHANGING NOT VERY DIGITAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION USP-03 Successful digital transformation comes not from implementing new technologies but from transforming your organisation to take advantage of the possibilities that new technologies provide.
    [Show full text]
  • IADIS Conference Template
    www.seipub.org/ie Information Engineering (IE) Volume 3, 2014 Performance and Quality Evaluation of jQuery Javascript Framework Andreas Gizas, Sotiris P. Christodoulou, Tzanetos Pomonis HPCLab, Computer Engineering & Informatics Dept., University of Patras Rion, Patras Received Jun 10, 2013; Revised Jun 21, 2013; Accepted Mar 12, 2014; Published Jun 12, 2014 © 2014 Science and Engineering Publishing Company Abstract devices. Mobile web is the name of this new field of The scope of this work is to provide a thorough web applications and JavaScript is expected to play a methodology for quality and performance evaluation of the major role in its development with the evolution of most popular JavaScript framework, the jQuery Framework, new devices and standards (ex. iPhone, Android) or as by taking into account well established software quality the heart of cross platform applications (like factors and performance tests. The JavaScript programming phonegap.com). There are also proposals for language is widely used for web programming and employing JavaScript in server-side applications increasingly, for general purpose of computing. Since the (Server-Side JavaScript Reference v1.2). growth of its popularity and the beginning of web 2.0 era, many JavaScript frameworks have become available for Due to the plethora of applications that JavaScript programming rich client-side interactions in web serves and the variety of programming needs, applications. The jQuery project and its community serve frameworks have been created in order to help both today as a major part of web programmers. The main programmers and end-users. These frameworks aim to outcome of this work is to highlight the pros and cons of be a useful tool for simplifying JavaScript code jQuery in various areas of interest and signify which and development and repeat blocks of code by using just a where the weak points of its code are.
    [Show full text]
  • 1. the ZK User Interface Markup Language
    1. The ZK User Interface Markup Language The ZK User Interface Markup Language (ZUML) is based on XML. Each XML element describes what component to create. XML This section provides the most basic concepts of XML to work with ZK. If you are familiar with XML, you could skip this section. If you want to learn more, there are a lot of resources on Internet, such as http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_whatis.asp and http://www.xml.com/pub/a/98/10/guide0.html. XML is a markup language much like HTML but with stricter and cleaner syntax. It has several characteristics worth to notice. Elements Must Be Well-formed First, each element must be closed. They are two ways to close an element as depicted below. They are equivalent. Close by an end tag: <window></window> Close without an end tag: <window/> Second, elements must be properly nested. Correct: <window> <groupbox> Hello World! </groupbox> </window> Wrong: <window> <groupbox> Hello World! </window> </groupbox> Special Character Must Be Replaced XML uses <element-name> to denote an element, so you have to replace special characters. For example, you have to use &lt; to represent the < character. ZK: Developer's Guide Page 1 of 92 Potix Corporation Special Character Replaced With < &lt; > &gt; & &amp; " &quot; ' &apos; It is interesting to notice that backslash (\) is not a special character, so you don't need to escape it at all. Attribute Values Must Be Specified and Quoted Correct: width="100%" checked="true" Wrong: width=100% checked Comments A comment is used to leave a note or to temporarily edit out a portion of XML code.
    [Show full text]
  • Web Development India
    WEB DEVELOPMENT INDIA Similar sites like www.tutorialspoint.com www.w3schools.com www.java2s.com www.tizag.com www.mkyong.com www.codecademy.com www.roseindia.net docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/ www.stackoverflow.com tutorials.jenkov.com imp……………………………………………….. http://www.xislegraphix.com/website-types.html http://orthodoxdaily.com/types-of-websites/ http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/1-process/6-types-of-sites.html http://www.virtualmv.com/wiki/index.php?title=Internet:Types_of_Website http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/which-types-of-websites-do-most-americans-visit- frequently-37970/ http://www.2createawebsite.com/prebuild/website-needs.html http://www.tomakewebsite.com/types-of-websites.html http://one-blog-wonder.tumblr.com/post/29818346464/what-types-of-websites-are-there http://www.roseindia.net/services/webdesigning/corporatewebsitedesign/Different-Kinds-of- Website.shtml http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2013/12083/which-types-of-websites-are-visited-most- frequently http://webdesignpeeps.com/types-of-websites/ http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/11/navigation-patterns-for-ten-common-types-of- websites/ http://www.teach-ict.com/gcse_new/software/web_design/miniweb/pg2.htm http://www.methodandclass.com/article/what-are-the-different-types-of-web-site http://www.webmasterview.com/2013/03/three-types-of-website/ http://www.chinkin.com/Web-Design/Types-of-Website http://www.designer-daily.com/8-types-of-sites-you-can-build-with-drupal-13924 http://www.mediatopia.co.uk/types-of-websites .................................................................................WEB
    [Show full text]
  • Appendix a the Ten Commandments for Websites
    Appendix A The Ten Commandments for Websites Welcome to the appendixes! At this stage in your learning, you should have all the basic skills you require to build a high-quality website with insightful consideration given to aspects such as accessibility, search engine optimization, usability, and all the other concepts that web designers and developers think about on a daily basis. Hopefully with all the different elements covered in this book, you now have a solid understanding as to what goes into building a website (much more than code!). The main thing you should take from this book is that you don’t need to be an expert at everything but ensuring that you take the time to notice what’s out there and deciding what will best help your site are among the most important elements of the process. As you leave this book and go on to updating your website over time and perhaps learning new skills, always remember to be brave, take risks (through trial and error), and never feel that things are getting too hard. If you choose to learn skills that were only briefly mentioned in this book, like scripting, or to get involved in using content management systems and web software, go at a pace that you feel comfortable with. With that in mind, let’s go over the 10 most important messages I would personally recommend. After that, I’ll give you some useful resources like important websites for people learning to create for the Internet and handy software. Advice is something many professional designers and developers give out in spades after learning some harsh lessons from what their own bitter experiences.
    [Show full text]
  • Using Hierarchical Folders and Tags for File Management
    Using Hierarchical Folders and Tags for File Management A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Drexel University by Shanshan Ma in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2010 © Copyright 2010 Shanshan Ma. All Rights Reserved. ii Dedications This dissertation is dedicated to my mother. iii Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to my advisor Dr. Susan Wiedenbeck. She encouraged me when I had struggles. She inspired me when I had doubts. The dissertation is nowhere to be found if it had not been for our weekly meetings and numerous discussions. I’m in great debts to all the time and effort that she spent with me in this journey. Thank you to my dissertation committee members, Dr. Michael Atwood, Dr. Xia Lin, Dr. Denise Agosto, and Dr. Deborah Barreau, who have guided me and supported me in the research. The insights and critiques from the committee are invaluable in the writing of this dissertation. I am grateful to my family who love me unconditionally. Thank you my mother for teaching me to be a strong person. Thank you my father and my brother for always being there for me. I would like to thank the iSchool at Drexel University for your generosity in supporting my study and research, for your faculty and staff members who I always had fun to work with, and for the alumni garden that is beautiful all year round. Thank you my friends in Philadelphia and my peer Ph.D. students in the iSchool at Drexel University.
    [Show full text]
  • ZKTM Mobile for Android the Quick Start Guide
    ppoottiixx SIMPLY REACH ZKTM Mobile for Android The Quick Start Guide Version 0.8.1 Feburary 2008 Potix Corporation ZK Mobile for Android for Android: Quick Start Guide Page 1 of 14 Potix Corporation Copyright © Potix Corporation. All rights reserved. The material in this document is for information only and is subject to change without notice. While reasonable efforts have been made to assure its accuracy, Potix Corporation assumes no liability resulting from errors or omissions in this document, or from the use of the information contained herein. Potix Corporation may have patents, patent applications, copyright or other intellectual property rights covering the subject matter of this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, copyrights or other intellectual property. Potix Corporation reserves the right to make changes in the product design without reservation and without notification to its users. The Potix logo and ZK are trademarks of Potix Corporation. All other product names are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective owners. ZK Mobile for Android for Android: Quick Start Guide Page 2 of 14 Potix Corporation Table of Contents Before You Start.............................................................................................................. 4 New to ZK Framework.....................................................................................................4 New to Google Android....................................................................................................4
    [Show full text]
  • Dictionary Software Based on Ajax Frameworks
    Seminar Paper Dictionary Software based on Ajax Frameworks Matthias Kerstner Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media Graz University of Technology Head: Herman Maurer O.Univ.-Prof. Dr.Dr.h.c.mult. Supervisor: Denis Helic Dipl.-Ing. Dr.techn. September 2007 Seminar Paper Abstract Abstract The necessity for dictionaries cannot be disputed. Although there are a vast variety of them they all follow a basic schema a key-value combination. It is interesting to see that many of the well known dictionary producers recently also provide electronic versions of their products, ranging from CDROMs over USB media to online databases. With the event of Ajax, web-based applications can be turned into desktop-like environments. It provides developers with an effective way to build web-applications using existing facilities (browsers, etc.), while still profiting from the latest technology. Seminar Paper Contents Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................3 Contents ...........................................................................................................4 List of Figures...................................................................................................5 1. Introduction ...............................................................................................6 2. Dictionaries ...............................................................................................8 3. Ajax Frameworks ......................................................................................9
    [Show full text]
  • Comparing Javascript Libraries
    www.XenCraft.com Comparing JavaScript Libraries Craig Cummings, Tex Texin October 27, 2015 Abstract Which JavaScript library is best for international deployment? This session presents the results of several years of investigation of features of JavaScript libraries and their suitability for international markets. We will show how the libraries were evaluated and compare the results for ECMA, Dojo, jQuery Globalize, Closure, iLib, ibm-js and intl.js. The results may surprise you and will be useful to anyone designing new international or multilingual JavaScript applications or supporting existing ones. 2 Agenda • Background • Evaluation Criteria • Libraries • Results • Q&A 3 Origins • Project to extend globalization - Complex e-Commerce Software - Multiple subsystems - Different development teams - Different libraries already in use • Should we standardize? Which one? - Reduce maintenance - Increase competence 4 Evaluation Criteria • Support for target and future markets • Number of internationalization features • Quality of internationalization features • Maintained? • Widely used? • Ease of migration from existing libraries • Browser compatibility 5 Internationalization Feature Requirements • Encoding Support • Text Support -Unicode -Case, Accent Mapping -Supplementary Chars -Boundary detection -Bidi algorithm, shaping -Character Properties -Transliteration -Charset detection • Message Formatting -Conversion -IDN/IRI -Resource/properties files -Normalization -Collation -Plurals, Gender, et al 6 Internationalization Feature Requirements
    [Show full text]
  • RIA Mit ZK Boost Your Productivity
    RIA mit ZK Boost your productivity Daniel Seiler, AIA 2008, Mainz Agenda Introduction ZK basics ZK component library We build an application ZK advanced concepts Custom component example Integration example, Gmaps Summary Goals of this session Infect you with the ZK virus You are able to explain the position of ZK in the current RIA Landscape You know the main features, concepts and principles of ZK Daniel Seiler, Processwide AG 3 The problem to solve To build rich, interactive, fast and scalable, distributed business applications ... ... we need a framework and technology that ... ... maximizes our productivity by abstracting and hiding much of the complexity ... provides a rich set of prebuilt components and features ... is easy to extend Daniel Seiler, Processwide AG 4 The big picture Local offline Trad. Distributed Rich (Asynchronous update, sorting, drag & drop, ...) Trad. Web- tools applications applications I nternet (Communication with Webserver) (Standalone, not ('Fat client', corba, RMI, (Page reloading, distributed, ...) local installation, ...) Application (User interactions, data storage, ...) simple controls) Office tools Eclipse RCP Runs in an external Runs directly in a runtime environment browser (No plugin, (plugin or standalone) Ajax) Applets (Java) Javascript Framework Flex (flash) library Laszlo (flash) Curl Captain Casa jQuery Echo2 (Swing, JSF) Prototype GWT Script.aculo.us ICE Faces DWR ZK Daniel Seiler, Processwide AG 5 The right tool for your job R ichness + Rich UI Local offline - Local, no central access
    [Show full text]
  • Backbone.Js on Rails
    1 Build snappier, more interactive apps with cleaner code and better tests in less time Backbone.js on Rails thoughtbot Jason Morrison Chad Pytel Nick Quaranto Harold Giménez Joshua Clayton Gabe Berke-Williams Chad Mazzola May 24, 2013 Contents 1 Introduction 7 The shift to client-side web applications ................. 7 Goals for this book ............................ 9 Alternatives to Backbone ......................... 9 The example application ......................... 10 Framework and library choice in the example application .... 10 Conventions used in this book ...................... 11 2 Getting up to speed 12 Backbone online resources ....................... 12 JavaScript resources ........................... 13 3 Organization 14 Backbone and MVC ............................ 14 What goes where ............................. 15 Namespacing your application ...................... 17 Mixins ................................... 18 1 CONTENTS 2 4 Rails Integration 20 Organizing your Backbone code in a Rails app ............. 20 Rails 3.0 and prior ............................. 20 Jammit and a JST naming gotcha ................. 22 Rails 3.1 and above ............................ 23 An overview of the stack: connecting Rails and Backbone ....... 25 Setting up models .......................... 26 Setting up Rails controllers ..................... 27 Setting Up Views .......................... 30 Customizing your Rails-generated JSON ................ 32 ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json ............. 34 Converting an existing page/view
    [Show full text]
  • Marsily-Msc2010
    U C L L S M . Richer Web Applications On Trends, Techniques and Standards Supervisor: Prof. J. V Master esis: Partial Fulllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in Business Engineering Charles M 2323.05.00 INGE22MS/G [email protected] Academic Year 2009-2010 . Acknowledgment I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Jean V for providing me a subject as interesting as rich web applications. Writing this document has redened how I use the Web today. e e e In addition, this work might not have been possible without my family’s continuous support. .. C C i L F iii I v Disclaimer.................................................................. vi Content & objectives........................................................ vi 1 U RIA 1 1.1 Denition and criteria ................................................. 1 ick vs. thin applications ................................................. 3 Client/server applications vs. web applications................................. 4 RIA features and characteristics ............................................. 5 Deployment alternatives ................................................... 6 1.2 Why RIAs are emerging? .............................................. 6 1.3 Limitations ........................................................... 8 1.4 Web applications vs. native apps: what to choose for the iPhone?. 9 1.5 RIAs as a part of a broader Web 2.0 era ................................. 11 1.6 RIAs for enterprises ................................................... 14
    [Show full text]