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Defining Rule Templates in the ALI HiPer BAM System

This chapter describes how to create rule templates in the ALI HiPer BAM System to be used as the basis for rules created in HiPer for Retail.

 

About BAM Alerts and Rule Templates

There are several pieces involved in defining rule templates. The following definitions are adapted from the Celequest documentation:

Events drive the ALI HiPer BAM System internal processing. Events are data produced by external business applications that record transactions, identify changes in business state, and synthesize the details about the business activities. The ALI HiPer BAM System receives events in event tables. Business views built on the tables then aggregate the event information and drive the rules that look for exceptional business conditions.

Contexts support event processing by providing meaningful information about the event. Contexts are the business information stored in databases, data warehouses, or are provided by Web services. Context tables receive data from agents that know how to communicate with information sources. When you define a context table, you also instruct the agent how to identify the information from the source.

Views are data models that provide a real-time picture of a business activity. Records of changes and transactions in your business enter the ALI HiPer BAM System as events. Each new event drives an immediate update of the views — the business models — derived from that event, thereby providing a real-time picture of the business metrics. Further, after a view has been updated, the system evaluates the rules associated with the view looking for exceptional business conditions that require attention.

A View is a virtual table that resides in memory and whose contents come from one or more sources as defined by a C-SQL SELECT query statement. You define views with the graphical user interface in the Application Workbench. The system then constructs a well-formed SELECT statement before passing it to the ALI HiPer BAM System for execution and maintenance.

A Scenario is a combination of rules, alerts and reportlets.

Rules monitor business activities by analyzing business views looking for metrics that meet specific conditions. Rule conditions are spreadsheet-like formulas that evaluate the changing business metrics looking for exceptional conditions. When a condition is found to exist the system executes any associated action.

Alerts are the notifications of exceptional events sent to users or external systems. They can be simple messages indicating that an event has occurred, or they can be more detailed and include context information about the event (for example, describe why it happened or describe what you can do about it).

Note: The alerts that are created in the ALI HiPer BAM System for HiPer for Retail send information to a HiPer for Retail Web Service that then processes the information accordingly. HiPer for Retail stores additional alert information in its database, which it uses to send the associated notification and tasks to the appropriate users. The ALI HiPer BAM System acts as the rules engine that notifies HiPer for Retail when a particular rule is triggered. However, when we refer to alerts in this section we are referring to the ALI HiPer BAM System alerts. The alerts in HiPer for Retail are referred to as notifications.

Reportlets describe the contents of a view and present that information in a report that is either attached to an alert message, or sent to an external system. Frequently reportlets provide information about an event that puts the event into context. For example, when an important customer opens a trouble ticket with the customer support center, an alert might notify managers of that activity, and an attached reportlet might list the other problem tickets that the customer has open. Reportlets are attached to all subscribers of the associated alert.

Alerts and reportlets are merely a mechanism for the ALI HiPer BAM System to pass necessary information to HiPer for Retail to provide more information about what happened. The basis for the interaction between HiPer for Retail and the ALI HiPer BAM System are rule templates. Rule templates are built out of all of the components of a scenario (rule, alert, and reportlet). By creating the rule template in the ALI HiPer BAM System, you allow business users to fill in parameters to monitor without having to have knowledge of the system integration setup and without having to define the logic of the rule's conditions or its alert message. Instead, the user chooses the rule template and provides the values that the rule will test for. For example, with the template condition order_total>[amount] a user provides the value of the amount parameter, and later receives notifications when that condition is true.

Defining the template once in the ALI HiPer BAM System allows users in HiPer for Retail to create multiple, unique business rules that use the same logic but test for different values. For example, one user might use a template to look for orders greater than $10,000, while another looks for orders over $66,000.

Business rules are based on the definition of the rule template at the time of creation. Any subsequent changes to the template (including its alert message or reportlet) do not affect the existing business rules created from that template.

You can create a rule template that monitors either a view or cube. For views, the rule monitors every event that enters the view. For cubes, the rule monitors the results in a specific dimension level only. Additionally for cubes, alerts attached to rules cannot incorporate reportlets.

For more information on creating these objects, refer to Celequest documentation and online help.

 

Define Rule Templates

Note: For more information on any of the steps in this section, refer to the Celequest documentation and online help

To define a rule template:

  1. In the ALI HiPer BAM System, click the Application Workbench tab and set up the appropriate events, contexts, and views for your rule template.
    2. Figure 3-1 Application Workbench


    Application Workbench

  2. Click the Scenario Modeler tab to create a rule template.
    3. Figure 3-2 Scenario Modeler


    Scenario Modeler

  3. Click New Rule Template.
  4. Select a data source that represents a ALI HiPer BAM System view.
  5. Define the Activation Condition. For example, the condition in Figure 3-3 will monitor the Inventory_onHand < [ Inventory_Target ] AND Product_Name = [ Product ] where [Inventory_Target] and [Product] are template parameters that will be entered by the business user in HiPer for Retail. If the Inventory On Hand is less than the Inventory Target for a specific product name the rule is triggered.
    6. Figure 3-3 Activation Condition


    Activation Condition

  6. Define a Reset Condition to automatically reset this rule (for example, if the inventory goes back above the threshold).
    7. Figure 3-4 Reset Condition


    Reset Condition

  7. Define the input parameters you want displayed along with the rule condition.
    8. Figure 3-5 Details for Templatized Parameters


    Details for Templatized Parameters

  8. Add a subject and alert text. This text is included in the alert and displays in the rule in HiPer for Retail.
    9. Note: We recommend that you include a data field (for example, store_id) in the subject so that the message is more meaningful to users. For example, in an alert about low inventory, the subject is more meaningful if it includes the store: "Store 123 has Low Inventory."
    Caution: You must include a reportlet in the message body because the only way HiPer for Retail knows which rule was triggered is by collecting that information from the reportlet (the rule template name is sent in the reportlet).
    Figure 3-6 Alert Text


    Alert Text

  9. Name the rule template and indicate whether a separate alert should be sent for each row, or if it should be combined for the entire event.
    10. Figure 3-7 Alert Detail


    Alert Detail

After you define the rule template in the ALI HiPer BAM System, inform the business user who requested the template that he or she can create the associated rule in HiPer for Retail.


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