Fundamentals of IBM Cúram Express Rules for Developers 6.X.X

IBM Curam Express Rules Engine Overview

Introduction:

This tutorial provides students with a technical understanding of the fundamentals of IBM Cúram Express Rules (CER).

The rules defined via CER are used by various IBM Cúram Social Program Management (SPM) applications. These rules also form a core part of products for social programs. An understanding of CER and how to use it to develop rules for social programs is essential to the success of many SPM projects.

This part of the course provides an overview of CER rules and covers the following topics: the use of CER rules in IBM Cúram SPM applications, fundamental CER concepts, and the tools and techniques for developing CER rules.

Each part of the course consists of a live examples that allows learners to design and implement simple rules using recommended development tools and techniques. After completing this course, you will be able to use development tools and product documentation to implement CER rules for IBM Cúram SPM products.

 

Who can Benefits:

You should have the knowledge of the Fundamentals of the IBM Cúram SPM Platform for Developers V6.0.4 and xml.

Reference Documents:

Name	URL(PDF Version)
CERReferenceManual	Cúram Express Rules Reference Manual
WorkingWithCER	Working with Cúram Express Rules
CER Rules Getting Started	CER Rules Getting Started

Introduction to CER rules:

The purpose of this document is to provide you with a high-level understanding of Curam
Express Rules (CER) and their various different aspects.. The article describes basic constructs that you need if you are developing
or modifying CER rules. It also describes what developers need to do to manage rule changes, and validate those changes. Finally, it describes implementation basics that you will need when developing CER rules.

CER is a domain-specific language developed by Cúram for use in defining questions that can be asked within the Cúram application, and for performing calculations.
CER rules are run to determine answers to questions and calculations. A question can be as simple as ‘Is the person eligible for benefit?’,  or as complex as ‘Who in the household is eligible for Child Benefit?’ Questions can also depend on other questions being answered. The question ‘Is the person eligible for benefit?’ requires further questions to be answered, such as ‘Is the
person in Employment?’  A CER rule set is a collection of rule classes.  Each rule class contains rule attributes. Rules contained in a rule set perform related functions.
Each rule set is an independently delivered unit, however there may be interdependencies between rule classes and rule attributes within a rule set and across rules

CER rules usage:

CER is used throughout the Cúram application for many types of calculations and for displaying results in Cúram applications.
Rule usage is defined by categories, such as the following rule categories that are used in the Cúram application.

• Eligibility and Entitlement determination. You run eligibility rules to determine a claimant’s eligibility for a product. When a claimant’s eligibility is determined, the
  Rules then determine what the claimant is entitled to receive.
• Display Rules. The primary goal of display rules is to build up an XML file that “sits on top of” the eligibility and entitlement rules, it contains a meaningful
  interpretation of the results of executing the eligibility and entitlement rules.
• Key Factor Rules. Key factor rules are used to display the key factors related to the determination of the client’s eligibility and entitlement, for example, displaying
  the dates on which the amount on the simple evidence entity changed.
• Advisor Rules. Advisor rules are the rule sets that calculate the advice that relates to the pages on which the advice will be displayed.
• Workflow Allocation Rules. Workflow allocation rules are used by the Workflow process definition tool to determine the allocation of work when a workflow is executed.
  Manual Activities within Cúram workflow are used when human intervention is required; an allocation strategy decides the appropriate user or group of users to assign.

Rules in each category are built by using Cúram Express Rules (CER) and follow the same implementation guidelines. However the design of the rules may vary between each category.

CER rules development environment:

• Cúram provide a runtime rules editor that you can use to implement rules. The CER Editor displays rule content from the database. The CER Editor can be used to view and modify CER rules.
• Rules can also be developed using a Text Editor. Where content has been modified externally to the CER Editor, the changes
  must be published using the target “build creole.upload.rulesets“.

Sample CER Ruleset Example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<RuleSet name="Example_description"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation=
"http://www.curamsoftware.com/CreoleRulesSchema.xsd">
  <Class name="Person">

    <Attribute name="firstName">
      <type>
        <javaclass name="String"/>
      </type>
      <derivation>
        <specified/>
      </derivation>
    </Attribute>

    <Attribute name="lastName">
      <type>
        <javaclass name="String"/>
      </type>
      <derivation>
        <specified/>
      </derivation>
    </Attribute>

    <!-- Override the default description -->
    <Attribute name="description">
      <type>
        <javaclass name="curam.creole.value.Message"/>
      </type>
      <derivation>
        <!-- Concatenate the person's first and last names -->
        <concat>
          <fixedlist>
            <listof>
              <javaclass name="Object"/>
            </listof>
            <members>

              <reference attribute="firstName"/>
              <String value=" "/>
              <reference attribute="lastName"/>
            </members>
          </fixedlist>
        </concat>
      </derivation>
    </Attribute>
  </Class>
  <Class name="Benefit">
    <!-- NB no override of <description>; the CER rule set validator
         will issue a warning, and rule objects of this class will
         be more difficult to understand in RuleDoc or a Java
         integrated development environment. -->
    <!-- The person to which this
         benefit record relates. -->
    <Attribute name="person">
      <type>
        <ruleclass name="Person"/>
      </type>
      <derivation>
        <specified/>
      </derivation>
    </Attribute>

    <Attribute name="amount">
      <type>
        <javaclass name="Number"/>
      </type>
      <derivation>
        <specified/>
      </derivation>
    </Attribute>
  </Class>
</RuleSet>

 

Please find other useful tutorial link related to CER Rulesets below

Fundamentals of IBM Cúram Express Rules for Developers 6.X.X Part1