Towards a Linguistic Analysis and Representation of

Business Rules

Pieter Joubert

Department of Informatics, University of Pretoria, Lynnwood, Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract. The paper explores linguistics as a basis for analyzing and

representing business rules. The actual business rules are seen as the text to be

analyzed. A very simple, straightforward methodology is explained and illu-

strated with part of a bigger case study. In essence every business rule is ana-

lyzed to determine nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions and other

lexical categories. The business rules are then structured into sentences which

basically have the structure of conjunctions, subject, predicate, and direct ob-

ject/adjunct.

1 Introduction

Business rules have gained prominence over the last few years. They are seen as

important assets of organisations that should be managed carefully [3]. Business rules

can also be seen as an important (maybe the most important) link between business

and IS. [4]

Business rules:

− Are constraints or tests designed to maintain integrity of data (Ross, 1997 in [2]).

− Are statements that aim to influence or guide behaviour and information in an

organisation [5]

− Define how the business is actually run [2].

− Define or constrain some aspect of a business [6].

− Determine business structure [6]

− Influence the behaviour of an organisation [6].

− Are statements that influences business behaviour towards desired objective

(Plotkin in [2])

− Are assertions that constrain patterns of the enterprise behaviour. (Morabito, et al,

2001 in [4])

Some characteristics of business rules are [4]:

− They exist in various forms, from simple to very complex and dynamic.

− They can originate internally, mostly derived from strategic processes, or exter-

nally, from government, industry or a specific profession.

− They can be based on explicit or tacit knowledge.

Joubert P. (2009).

Towards a Linguistic Analysis and Representation of Business Rules.

In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Advanced Technologies and Techniques for Enterprise Information Systems, pages 105-113

DOI: 10.5220/0002217601050113

 SciTePress

− They can be found in documents, procedures, policies, regulations, user manuals,

information systems, etc.

− They are normally expressed in the form of principles, procedures, facts, figures,

rules, formulas, etc.

− Explicit business rules are a manifestation of a richer underlying knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to show that that a “guided” linguistic analysis can

help to analyse and represent business rules. The methodology does not require the

modellers to have a deep understanding of linguistics. A straight-forward, common-

sense approach to linguistic analysis will be followed, so that this methodology is

usable by non-linguists.

To show this the following will be done: Firstly, a very basic linguistic analysis

methodology will be proposed and illustrated by analysing and representing a number

of business rules from various sources. Secondly, the linguistic representations of the

business rules will be discussed to indicate how this analysis contributes to better

understanding the business rules.

2 A Basic Linguistic Analysis Methodology

2.1 Introduction

The methodology suggested in this section combines a morphological and syntactical

analysis. A semantic and pragmatic analysis can also be included but has been ex-

cluded from this study because of space restrictions.

Every business rule can be seen as linguistic text to be analysed. In essence the

methodology takes every business rule and breaks it up in the following fixed parts:

− A conjunction linking related clauses.

− A subject indicating the person or thing which the clause is about.

− A predicate describing what the subject did, what action was done to the subject

or what state of existence the subject is in.

− A direct object/adjunct indicating persons or things affected by the action of the

verb.

For instance the business rule “each policy must have an expiry date” can be

represented in structured sentence format as:

Conjunction Subject Predicate Object/Adjunct

(Each) Policy (Must) have Expiry date

Or diagrammatically

Fig. 1. Diagrammatical representation of a business rule.

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2.2 The Steps in more Detail

The steps involved are listed below and business rule “IF acceptance of renewal

notice from insured is not received within 14 days THEN send reminder” will be used

to illustrate the process:

1. Identify verbs

: Take each business rule and identify the verbs or verb phrases.

Look for both action and existence verbs. (Action verbs portray actions, e.g. He

walked

slowly forward; while existence verbs indicate states of existence, e.g. He

a man.) There will normally be one row in the resulting table for each verb

identified in the business rule. Make verbs infinitive, present tense where possible,

for instance walked and walks become walk. Place auxiliary parts of a verb phrase

in brackets. Place one verb only in the Predicate column.

Two verb phrases can be identified in the example business rule: is not received

and send. Place these two verb phrases in the Predicate column of two subsequent

rows. Make verbs infinitive, present tense, i.e. is not received becomes (Not) receive.

Conjunction Subject Predicate Direct Object /Adjunct

(Not) Receive

Send

2. Identify nouns: Place one noun only in the second Subject, Direct Ob-

ject/Adjunct column as applicable. (A noun denotes persons, places or things

that we can either perceive by our senses or conceive in our minds.) Make all

nouns singular and show the plural parts in brackets. There does not always have

to be an explicit subject (although there is always an implicit one). These are

nouns that are directly or indirectly the agent or doer of an action. Most human

nouns are. There must be a direct object or adjunct or both. If there is more than

one adjunct they must follow on subsequent rows. Simplify clumsy noun phrases,

for instance, courses that can be offered should rather be offered course; and

courses that can be scheduled should rather be scheduled course. Note that the

two examples in the previous sentence implies that out of all possible courses,

only some will be offered and only some will be scheduled.

In the example business rule neither verbs have subjects specified. For the first

verb receive place the direct object acceptance in the second Direct Object/Adjunct

column. For the second verb phrase send the direct object is a genitive case noun pair

that needs to be resolved as shown in the next step.

3. Identify all direct and indirect genitive case noun pairs. Genitive case nouns can

be identified by the following means: (1) the proximity of nouns, for instance,

room equipment implies the room’s equipment; (2) special words like their and

for, for instance, rooms and their equipment and equipment for rooms also implies

room’s equipment; and (3) nouns with an apostrophe s, for instance, the room’s

equipment. Translate all these genitive case noun pairs into the basic genitive for-

mat, noun of noun, for instance, equipment of room.

In the example business rule acceptance of renewal notice becomes acceptance

(of) renewal notice. At this stage the table looks as follows:

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Conjunction Subject Predicate Adjunct

(Not) Receive Acceptance (of)

Renewal Notice

Send Reminder

4. Identify adjectives: All adjectives must be placed within brackets together with

their referent nouns. (Adjectives specify the attributes of a noun or pronoun e.g.

The tall

girl danced.)

In the example business rule the 14 in 14 days is an adjective describing the noun

days.

5. Identify prepositions

: If a preposition is followed by a noun or a noun phrase it is

part of the Adjunct (and placed in the first column of the Direct Object/Adjunct

section), however, if it is followed by a verb or verb phrase it becomes a new row

and the preposition (or its conjunction equivalent) is placed in the Conjunction

column. (Prepositions indicate a semantic relationship between entities, for in-

stance: (1) location of one entity in relation to another, e.g. the book is on / under /

above / below / near the bookshelf; (2) direction, e.g. he travelled from his house

to work; and (3) accompaniment, e.g. with/without salt.)

In the example business rule, related to the first verb are two prepositions: from

and within. Specify on the next line in the first direct object/adjunct column the

prepositions and in the second column the nouns on subsequent lines. At this stage

the table looks as follows:

Conjunction Subject Predicate Adjunct

(Not) Receive Acceptance (of)

Renewal notice

From Insured

Within (14) days

Send Reminder

6. Identify conjunctions: If you have more than one predicate per business rule, the

resulting clauses are many times linked to each other. The conjunction column is

used to link the various rows together.

In the example business rule the conjunctions IF and THEN are both followed by

sentences and are therefore placed in the Conjunction column.

Conjunction Subject Predicate Adjunct

If (Not) Receive Acceptance (of)

Renewal notice

From Insured

Within (14) days

Then Send Reminder

7. Identify adverbs. All adverbs must be adjusted so that they can be placed into the

adjunct. For instance, for the phrase double booked place book in the Predicate

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column and double in the Adjunct column. (Adverbs modify verbs (he sang

loudly), adjectives (a very tall building), other adverbs (unbelievably quickly) and

sentences (sadly, he died).)

There are no adverbs in the example business rule.

8. Identify pronouns: For the lexical analysis ignore pronouns and replace them with

the nouns or noun phrases that they take the place of (their referents). For in-

stance, in the phrase instructors, and their availability, the pronoun their refers to

instructors and should be replaced by that. (Pronouns are words that are usually

used in place of nouns or noun phrases, e.g. she

looked him in the eye. The noun

or noun phrase that is replaced by a pronoun is called the referent (or antecedent)

of the pronoun.)

9. Handle lists: A list separated by commas implies that everything applying to the

first item in the list also applies to the rest of the items.

10. All other lexical categories: Ignore all other lexical categories.

The final representation of the business rule is:

Conjunction Subject Predicate Object/Adjunct

If (Not) Receive Acceptance (Of)

Renewal notice

From Insured

Within (14) day(s)

Then Send Reminder

This structured sentence can also be represented diagrammatically as follows (All

noun phrases are placed in rectangles, verb phrases in ellipses, conjunctions in di-

amonds, prepositions are on the lines linking it):



Fig. 2. Diagrammatical representation of example.

Specifying the business rule in this way clearly shows the structure of the business

rule, missing information and the key components of the business rule:

− This business rule in essence is an action condition which, if not true, is followed

by another action. It can be stated as follows: IF (NOT) ACTION THEN

ACTION.

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− Both actions lack a subject, which can lead to questions by the analyst like “who

receives the acceptance” and “who must send the reminder”, ensuring more com-

plete business rules.

− The fact that the business rule is involved in 4 objects (Acceptance of renewal

notice, insured, days and reminder) is also very clear. It is possible to group busi-

ness rules by object, for instance, by reminder.

− A basic logical check on the verb can help to ensure a more complete business

rule. For instance, the verb receive, leads to the following questions (based on the

Zachman questions plus other questions), what

is received, who receives it, from

whom do we receive, when must it received, where must it be received, why is it

received. In this example, what = acceptance, when = within 14 days, from whom

= insured. These questions can be asked for any action.

2.3 A more Extended Example

The following example (adapted from [6]) will be used as a more extended example:

EU-Rent has 1000 branches in towns in several countries. At each branch cars,

classified by car group, are available for rental. Each branch has a manager and

booking clerks who handle rentals.

Most rentals are by advance reservation; the rental period and the car group are

specified at the time of reservation. EU-Rent will also accept immediate (‘walk-in’)

rentals, if cars are available.

At the end of each day cars are assigned to reservations for the following day. If

more cars have been requested than are available in a group at a branch, the branch

manager may ask other branches if they have cars they can transfer to him/her.

Diagrammatically this example can be represented as follows:

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

Fig. 3. Diagrammatical representation of EU-Rent example.

2.4 A Discussion of the Resulting Analysis and Representation

The above analysis and representation provides the following results fairly straight-

forward:

− Existence verbs can indicate static relationships between objects. For instance, the

has in business rules 1, 2 4 and 5, can be represented in an ERD as follows:

Fig. 4. Static relationships based on existence verbs.

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− Existence verbs can also indicate static relationships between objects and their

attributes. For instance, the are in business rules 9b and 11b, can be represented in

an ERD as follows:

Fig. 5. Object attribute relationships based on existence verbs.

− By just listing all of the objects (as represented in blocks) a quick overview of the

entities involved in the business rules can be identified.

− All subjects where the predicate is an action verb provide a list of all potential

actors (in for instance, use case modelling). In the example business rules 6, 9a,

11c, 11e gives the list Booking Clerk, EU-Rent, Branch Manager and Branch can

be deduced. Business rules 8, 10 and 11a are action predicates without subjects

which then will logically lead to asking questions to determine the corresponding

actors.

3 Conclusions

This paper shows that even a very basic linguistic analysis can help towards firstly

understanding and analysing a business rule better; and secondly, representing it

better. Based on this initial analysis further more advanced analysis can be done much

easier.

This paper gives only an indication of what is possible with linguistic analysis and

does not constitute completed research. Furthermore, at this stage the methodology

only considers morphological and lexical analysis. Semantic and pragmatic analysis

can be addressed in further research and will expand the richness of analysis even

further.

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