8 Creating and Using Rules for a Decision Service

This chapter describes how to use Oracle Business Rules Rule Author (Rule Author) to create rules and a data model, and how to use existing facts and rule definitions with BPEL. The SOA Order Booking application is used as an example to illustrate how rules defined with the BPEL Decision Service determine whether an order requires manual approval in the credit service, based on the purchase status of the customer and the amount of the current purchase order. You use Rule Author to build the data model and the rules, after Rule Author processes the XML schema that defines the purchase order.

This chapter includes the following sections:

• Section 8.1, "Introduction to Oracle Business Rules and Rule Author"

• Section 8.2, "Creating a Rule Author User"

• Section 8.3, "Using Rule Author"

• Section 8.4, "Creating and Saving a Dictionary with Rule Author"

• Section 8.5, "Importing an XML Schema into the Data Model with Rule Author"

• Section 8.6, "Defining a Variable in the Data Model with Rule Author"

• Section 8.7, "Creating Rules with Rule Author"

For more information about using a BPEL Decision Service, see Section 7.8, "Using Business Rules and a Decide Activity".