PRECISE SPECIFICATION OF BUSINESS DECISIONS AND BUSINESS RULES
- 2. The purpose of DMN is to provide the constructs that are needed to model decisions, so that organizational decision- making can be readily depicted in diagrams, accurately defined by business analysts, and (optionally) automated. Decision-making is addressed from two different perspectives by existing modeling standards: • Business process models (e.g. BPMN) can describe the coordination of decision-making within business processes by defining specific tasks or activities within which the decision- making takes place. • Decision logic (e.g., PRR, PMML) can define the specific logic used to make individual decisions, for example as business rules, decision tables, or executable analytic models.
- 3. Figure 5-1: Aspects of modeling
- 4. DMN will provide constructs spanning both decision requirements and decision logic modeling. For decision requirements modeling, it defines the concept of a Decision Requirements Graph (DRG) comprising a set of elements and their connection rules, and a corresponding notation: The Decision Requirements Diagram (DRD). For decision logic modeling it provides a language called FEEL for defining and assembling decision tables, calculations, if/then/else logic, simple data structures, and externally defined logic from Java and PMML into executable expressions with formally defined semantics. It also provides a notation for decision logic (“boxed expressions”) allowing components of the decision logic level to be drawn graphically and associated with elements of a Decision Requirements Diagram. The relationship between these constructs is shown in Figure 5-2.
- 5. Figure 5-2: DMN Constructs
- 6. Three uses of DMN can be discerned in this context: 1. For modeling human decision-making. 2. For modeling the requirements for automated decision- making. 3. For implementing automated decision-making.