The Rulesheet window is divided into several sections, each with a specific use in creating business rules.
Rules
This section of the Rulesheet organizes Conditions, Values and Actions in a table format.
Conditions (quadrant 1) and Actions (quadrant 2) are organized in the decision table shown above. Sets of Conditions and Actions are tied together to form rules by the vertical columns spanning the two right quadrants (3 & 4) of this section.
The cells in a vertical rule column (highlighted in blue) specify the Condition rows which must be satisfied (determined by the cell values in quadrant 3) necessary to execute or fire the Action rows (determined by the cell values in quadrant 4).
The illustration above contains the model of the sample business rule: if a cargo's weight is not between 150000 and 200000, and that cargo's volume is less than 300, then assign its packaging a value of Pallet.
Nonconditional Rules
The first column is a special column reserved for nonconditional rules.
Column 0 in the Conditions/Actions section of the Rulesheet is special because the Conditions rows are grayed-out and unusable. Expressions may only be modeled in the Action rows.
Logically, this means that all Actions modeled in Column 0 are unconditionally executed. In other words, no Conditions must be satisfied in order for these Actions to execute.
Each Action row in Column 0 acts as a separate, independent rule. Each Action row constitutes a separate Nonconditional rule.
Scope and Filters in the Advanced View
When the Advanced View is selected, the Scope and Filter sections for the current Rulesheet are displayed.
Figure 264. Scope section, showing an Entity and its alias
The Scope section provides a reduced set of Vocabulary terms with which to build a Rulesheet.
The Scope section can be populated directly by dragging and dropping Vocabulary elements into it, or indirectly, by dragging and dropping Vocabulary nodes onto other Rulesheet sections.
Once a node is visible in the Scope section, it can be dragged and dropped to other Rulesheet sections henceforth.
For those Entities in the Scope section, aliases and associations can be defined by double-clicking the Entity to open an edit box. An alias replaces the fully qualified entity name wherever it is used in the Rulesheet, and serves as a sort of local name for use in that Rulesheet only. When an entity has been set to Datastore Persistent in the Vocabulary's details view, it is decorated with a database symbol. In the Rulesheet, that means you provide an alias and then set thew entity to Extend to Database, as shown:
Figure 265. Setting an alias in scope to Extend to Database
Note: For more information about Extend to Database, see the "Writing Rules to access external data" section of the Rule Modeling Guide and the "Implementing EDC" section of the Integration and Deployment Guide.
See the Rule Modeling Guide for details on scope, context and Rulesheet aliases.
Filters
This section is visible only when the Advanced View is toggled (the button on the Corticon Studio toolbar.)
Filters are boolean expressions - they are either TRUE or FALSE - that are applied to data before rule columns are evaluated. Before using this section, we recommend reading the Filters chapter of the Rule Modeling Guide.
on the Corticon Studio toolbar.)