Object Management Group

First Needham Place

250 First Avenue, Suite 100
Needham, MA 02494 USA
info@omg.org http://www.omg.org
Tel: +1-781-444 0404 Fax: +1-781-444 0320

Business Rule Management

Request for Information
(BEI BRM RFI)
Responses Due: 11 October 2004

OMG Document Number

bei/2004-06-03
21 June 2004

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

1 Introduction
This Request for Information (RFI) solicits information regarding the management of all kinds of business rules
in business information systems, under the term business rule management, and whether there is a need or
desire to standardize such management information and/or services. The issuing of this RFI follows from
previous OMG meetings that discussed the need for standards in various areas of business rule management.
In the context of this Request For Information, the term business rule management is defined to mean any
combination of:
-

collection
representation
organization and structure
analysis and reporting
input and output, for any purpose
testing, or extraction for testing
verification and validation, or extraction for these purposes
comparison
deployment information
tracing to external stimuli, requirements or other information

of business rules, where such rules may be:

-

defined as business definitions for business use (to represent policies, practices and procedures),

defined as executable business rule statements for use in some rule-driven system,

both.

or
or

The Object Management Group (OMG) and, specifically, the Business Enterprise Integration (BEI) task force,
will use the information provided in response to this RFI to determine any need for, and support development
of, standards for managing business rules in business information systems. Such standards could be used to
promote interoperability across systems that provide business rule management, and in particular would
complement the OMG business rule standards under development (the Business Semantics for Business Rules,
and the Production Rule Representation).
This information is being requested from stakeholders in business, academia, and government agencies
involved in the use of, supply and development of, and services based on business rule management.
It is important to note that both OMG members and non-members are encouraged to respond. The information
being requested is described in Section 2. Please contact the BEI task force chairmen at the email below if you
have any questions or comments.
Fred Cummins [mailto:fred.cummins@eds.com]
Stan Hendryx [mailto:Stan@HendryxAssoc.com]
In order to provide some guidance to readers who are new to the role of business rule management standards,
some sample vendor applications associated with business rule management are listed in Chapter 5 as an
Appendix, together with some sample roles of rule management standards.

OMG Context and Scope

The OMG is an international consortium that was established in 1989. Its mission is focused on interoperability
using object technology. Some of the primary standards the Consortium has adopted include specifications for
CORBA and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). The OMG has a mature process, infrastructure, and

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

organization for adopting standards. Its organization includes a combination of special interest groups, working
groups, task forces, technology committees, and an architecture board, each with defined responsibilities in
support of their technology adoption process. The process typically follows a pattern of generating a Request
for Information to Industry to gather requirements, followed by a release of a Request for Proposal with the
requirements for the standard. The OMG then evaluates responses, and adopts the standard based on the
evaluations. Additional information can be found at the OMG web site at http://www.omg.org/.

RFI Objectives
This RFI seeks information to help the BEI to:
a) formulate requirements for business rule management,
b) identify potential and existing solutions to these requirements that may benefit from standardization,
c) identify existing standards that may be relevant to business rule management
and
d) identify interested stakeholders in the management of all types of business rules, including potential
responders to an RFP.
Based on responses to this RFI and other inputs, the BEI will determine whether to recommend to OMG a
schedule for issuing any necessary additional RFIs and RFPs to develop standards for Business Rule
Management.

2 Information Being Requested

This RFI is seeking the information described below.
Respondents are asked to address areas in which they have expertise and/or interest.
A responder can respond to all or some of the questions.
Respondents may also provide information on areas that are not explicitly specified, if they feel the
information provides useful guidance to support the RFI objectives.
The information requested in this section is intended to describe the lessons learned and the problems identified
in managing business rules, with associated limitations and issues, and potential solutions.
The OMG is interested in specific highlights that will help identify areas for further research and
standardization, related to business rule management and specifying business rule management systems.
The OMG encourage responders to select only examples that are understood well, and best illustrate the issues
that support our objectives.
Background information includes:
A. Areas why you might consider business rule management (ie in support of, or to address) :
business improvement managing the rules that define the business,
regulatory compliance managing the rules that affect compliance issues,
process improvement managing the rules contained in business processes,
quality improvement managing the rules for process readability and auditability,
business change management managing the change process,
operational excellence optimizing the business rules used in an organization,
system development, integration and maintenance improving the software development process,
management of UML models with embedded business rules improving the use of UML
support of MDA in the software development process improving the use of MDA
asset management and re-use managing rules as other business and/or software assets
or areas why you might not consider business rule management:
business rules do not justify any specialized management,
business rules are too complex / costly to manage.

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

Respondents are not expected to necessarily cover all of these areas. Limited but insightful responses are
welcome, as are more comprehensive responses covering a combination of these areas.
B. Sources of experience may include:
Projects by end users (from industry or government) that have applied or used business rule management
data, processes or systems, for manual processes or IT solutions (custom or commercial).
Explorations by academic or other research groups researching the topic of business rule management.
Activities by vendors to build tools that support or potentially support business rule management.
Initiatives by industry associations and standards groups that have already been formed or are being
planned.
For each source, we recommend the following specific questions:
1.

Provide the responders role in relation to business rule management.from the following:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

2.

Business stakeholder with a requirement to manage business rules

Business stakeholder involved in managing business rules as information or executable entities
Business user of an automated business rule management system
Business specialist involved in advising on processes involved in business rule management
IT specialist involved in setting up a business rule management system (or system that
incorporates a business rule management function)
Vendor of business rule management, or related, systems.

Have you used, or proposed, for the purposes of business rule management:
existing standards, OMG or otherwise;
and / or
software solutions, business rule specific or generic;
and / or
business processes or methodologies.
Specifically:
a. Which process, methodology and/or software (solution) have you used for Business Rule
Management?
b. What existing standards play a role, or could play a role, in a business rule management solution?
Examples include:
OMG CWM for data representation,
OMG MOF for rule management metamodeling,
OMG XMI for model data interchange,
OMG UML for rule management modeling, and
W3C XML for metadata.
c. What existing management solutions play a role, or could play a role, in a business rule
management solution? Examples include:
Version management,
Model management,
Configuation management, and
Collaboration modeling.
d. What business advantages do you accrue from using a business rule management solution?
e. What benefits would occur in standardizing certain aspects (such as metadata and/or service
definitions) of a future iteration of your organizations business rule management solution?

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

3.

Provide details of the implementation of a business rule management process, methodology and/or
software (solution).
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.

g.
h.

4.

What are your organizations requirements for business rule management?

Is business rule management seen as having a project, departmental or enterprise role? To what %
is it used and planned throughout the organization?
How many iterations, generations or versions has your business rule management solution
evolved through?
How often are rules added, deleted, modified, reviewed, tested, reported on and deployed in the
business rule management solution?
What quantities of rules are managed, and what other rule metrics are provided by the rule
management solution?
What disciplines are involved in managing business rules? For example: business management,
rule stewards, rulebase administrators, business analysts, system or software engineers, quality
engineers, business auditors?
Who are the end-users of your rule management solution or process? For example: business
managers, subject matter experts, process managers, business analysts, IT developers?
What software tools, if any, are used to support the management of business rules? If no software
solution is used, what artifacts are used to manage business rules? Software used could include:
Custom-designed software,
Office software products such as MS Word, or Excel,
Database software, with a schema that represents rule metadata,
Rule extraction software, from legacy systems (such as ASG, Transoft, SEEC),
Requirements management software (such as IBM Rational Requisite Pro, DOORS),
Business modeling software (such as Casewise Business Rule Accelerator, Popkin),
Business rule repositories for business users (such as BRSolutions RuleTrack),
Business rule management solutions based on rule engine technology (such as Fair Isaac
Blaze Advisor, CA Cleverpath Aion, ILOG JRules).

i.

What organizational structures and elements are provided for business rule management? Please
provide a description (eg a simple UML model such as class diagram) of the rule management
information or rule metadata used. Examples include:
Author, Reviewer
Date / time created, reviewed, deployed
Traceability: source information, deployment information
Effectivity date
Related business rules (through chaining, ruleset inclusion etc)
Related decision artifacts (decision trees, tables, scorecards etc).

j.

What management services are provided for business rule management? Please provide a
description of the services defined (such as create/update/delete, report by metadata or
deployment, compare, interchange across systems, and verify).

Provide details on the rules being managed.

a.

b.

What types of business rules (and related decision artifacts) are managed? Please specify any
particular rule taxonomy used in your response, or consider the list of rule types to include:
i. Business statements or executable artifacts?
ii. Policies, practices, procedures, vision statements, business objectives?
iii. Constraints, database triggers, inference rules, UML OCL rules, event condition action
rules?
iv. Decision tables, decision trees, scorecards, score models, ripple down rules?
Are the managed business rules being used as requirements for software system development?

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

c.

d.

e.

f.

5.

Which of the following documented sources for your business rules are managed within, or at
least tracked within, your rule management solution?. Please check all that apply:
i. Laws or regulations?
ii. Policy manuals?
iii. Operations manuals?
iv. Operations forms or reports?
v. Interviews with policy makers?
vi. Interviews with domain experts?
vii. Legacy system code?
viii. Automated rule generation from operational analytical systems?
ix. Other (please describe)?
Are business rules expressed in your business rule management solution in a free-form or
structured (machine-readable, human-readable) or structured IT (computer language) form, or any
combination of these?
How did you relate business semantics (business rule terms and facts, and term and fact models)
to the business rules being managed? Are the terms and facts also managed by the business rule
management solution?
How important is the relationship between rule deployment in an IT system to the management of
business rules?

How important would the specification of one or more OMG standards in the area of business rule
management be to your organization?
a. Are existing standards sufficient to satisfy the requirements of business rule management
solutions?
b. Would you respond to an OMG RFP for technology to handle business rule management?
c. Would you be likely to specify or use an OMG standard for business rule management?

3 Instructions for Responding to this RFI

Companies responding to this RFI should designate a single contact within that company for receipt of all
subsequent information regarding this RFI and the forthcoming series of RFPs. The name of this contact will be
made available to all OMG members.
Responses to this RFI must be received at OMG no later than 5:00 PM US Eastern Time (22:00 UTC) (October
11, 2004). (See below for more details on receipt dates and addresses). However, earlier responses are
encouraged.
Documentation submitted in response to this RFI will be available to all OMG members.

Format of RFI Responses

The following outline is offered to assist in the development of your response. You should include:

A cover letter -- the cover letter should include a brief summary of your response such as indicating which
areas you are responding to and indicate if supporting documentation is included in your response.
Your response to any or all of the areas of information requested by this RFI.
If required, a glossary that maps terminology used in your response to OMG standard terminology. (See
OMG modeling specifications [UML, MOF, XMI] and a description of OMGs Model Driven Architecture
[MDA] for OMG's standard terminology.)

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

Although the OMG does not limit the size of responses, you are asked to consider that the OMG will rely upon
volunteer resources with limited time availability to review these responses. In order to assure that your
response receives the attention it deserves, you are asked to consider limiting the size of your response (not
counting any supporting documentation) to approximately 25 pages. If you consider supporting documentation
to be necessary, please indicate which portions of the supporting documentation are relevant to this RFI.
NOTE: According to the Policies and Procedures of the OMG Technical Committee, proprietary and
confidential material may not be included in any response to the OMG. Responses become public documents of
the OMG. If copyrighted, a statement waiving that copyright for use by the OMG is required and a limited
waiver of copyright that allows OMG members to make up to at least twenty-five copies for review purposes is
required.

How to Submit
One electronic copy in machine-readable format (typically ASCII, MS Word, or WordPerfect format) should be
sent to omg-documents@omg.org. One confirming paper copy of all documents should be sent to the OMG
postal address below. Other communication regarding this RFI should also be sent to the email address below.
OMG:
BEI Task Force
Object Management Group, Inc.
First Needham Place
250 First Avenue, Suite 100
Needham, MA 02494
USA
Phone: +1-781-444 0404
Fax: +1-781-444 0320
Email responses to this RFI must be received at OMG no later than 5:00 PM US Eastern Time (22:00 GMT) 11
October 2004 and the confirming paper copy must arrive at OMG shortly thereafter. The outside of
packages/envelopes containing responses or any other communication regarding this RFI should be clearly
marked "BEI Business Rule Management RFI RESPONSE".
NOTE: Your organization should be prepared to handle requests for additional copies of your response and
supporting documentation.

Reimbursements
The OMG will not reimburse submitters for any costs in conjunction with their responses to this RFI.

4 Response Review Process and Schedule

Process
RFIs such as this one are issued with the intent to survey industry to obtain information that provides guidance,
which will be used in the preparation of RFPs. The OMG membership, specifically the BEI, will review
responses to this RFI. Based on those responses, BEI Task Force will consider preparing one or more RFPs.

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OMG Business Rule Management RFI

Clarification of Responses
To fully comprehend the information contained within a response to this RFI, the reviewing group may seek
further clarification on that response. This clarification may be requested in the form of brief verbal
communication by telephone; written communication; electronic communication; or a presentation of the
response to a meeting of the BEI Task Force. Therefore, BEI Task Force requests that submitters attend the BEI
meeting at which their response will be considered prepared to present and clarify their responses.

Schedule
The schedule for responding to this RFI is as follows. Please note that early responses are encouraged.
RFI issued
25 June 2004
RFI responses due
11 October 2004
The tentative schedule for the RFI evaluation process is:
Review of RFI responses

1 November 2004 (OMG Meeting)

NOTE: Submitters are recommended to present their responses in person at the November OMG Meeting.

5 Appendix: Sample Rule Management Solutions

Business rule management is a relatively new area of information science, and is often related to:
- business modeling
- software asset management
- software development and maintenance.
Several vendors provide solutions for rule management or related to rule management. Some solutions are
referenced here with short descriptions of some of the business problems they solve, and where rule
management standards appropriate in their use. Inclusion here does not imply endorsement by OMG for their
use in any way.
Solution

Problems Solved

Sample Relevance of
Rule Management Standards

RuleTrack
from www.brsolutions.com

Organizes textual statements of

business rules in a repository, with
numerous reports and guidance for
their maintenance.

Rule metadata could be imported /

exported with business rules when
input or output via a BSBR or PRR
standard.

Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor

from www.fairisaac.com\edm

Defines a structured (executable)

rules language, design patterns for
rules, rule maintenance via web
interface, and rule execution in a
declarative or sequential manner.

Rule metadata could be imported

from text-based rule repositories
rule tools, as well as exported to
standards-based reporting tools.
Rule comparison or class model
reference services could be
provided for use by other software
systems.

Casewise Business Rule

Accelerator
from www.casewise.com

Defines a business rules repository

that attaches to business model
components.

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Rule metadata could be exported

with business rules when output to
a UML or business rule engine
tool.

OMG Business Rule Management RFI

LibRT Valens
from www.librt.com

Verifies business rules for

completeness and correctness.

Rule metadata for verification

results could be output to a host
rule management solution.
Rule verification services could be
provided for use by other software
systems.

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