Transcript

Rule resolution is a key function within PRPC. It is the process by which PRPC decides which rule is used to evaluate an action. In essence, rule resolution is the process of “selecting the right rule at the right time.” From PRPC 5.2, there has been a change to Rule Resolution that affects the way you design your applications and the way in which your applications run.

The Withdrawn rule status is very important to increasing flexibility in PRPC rule maintenance and enhancing reusability. To best understand the value of the withdrawn rule status, let's look at a rule maintenance scenario:

• A decision rule is created in the class MyApp-Loan-Program1 in RuleSet “Prog1:01-01-01”.
• That RuleSet is then locked and promoted to production.
• It is then determined that the decision rule is actually common across all programs and should actually reside in the MyApp-Loan class.

Prior to PRPC version 5.2, this was difficult to fix: One option was to unlock the 01-01-01 RuleSet and delete the rule. This is not advisable as unlocking RuleSets is not a best practice and is often forbidden Another option was to just copy the rule from the current class to the more generic class. In this example, from the MyApp-Loan-Program1 class to MyApp-Loan class. This results in dual maintenance and reduces true reusability.

From PRPC version 5.2, this scenario has been solved by:

1. Performing a “save as” of the decision rule in MyApp-Loan-Program1 class to the latest unlocked RuleSet.
2. When saving the change, change the rule’s status to Withdrawn. Perform another “save as”, copying the rule to MyApp-Loan.
3. Make sure this rule’s instances status is “Available”.

The Withdrawn rule status will hide the rule and all the rules in the same class, of the same name and type, in the same RuleSet name with an equal or lower version number to the withdrawn rule. Therefore, these rules will not be considered during the rule resolution process.