Write Inferred Entity Rules In Excel

Entity instances can be inferred using Excel rules. Inferred entities can be used:

as data to drive other decisions
as information that will be shown directly to users
as results that will be passed back to a connected application

For example, if you wanted to infer the possible holiday destinations as well as the tourist attractions in a country you could set up your data model like this:

A data model in Policy Modeling showing 'the country' entity with a child entity 'the tourist attraction'

(The Entity Structure view on the Data tab in Policy Modeling shows inferred entities in italic text for easy identification.)

You could then use an Excel rule to infer the entity instances and entity attributes like this:

Rule table in Excel showing the use of conditions to determine when inferred entities should be created

In an interview, the user answers whether they would like the holiday destinations to include non-English speaking countries and then this sets the attributes of the inferred entity.

An interview screen in the Debugger showing inferred entities

Tip: To see these rules, open the Holiday Destinations 1 project in Oracle Policy Modeling. Note that to write inferred entity rules in Excel you need to have a basic knowledge of writing general rules in Excel. If you are not familiar with writing rules in Excel, see Define Decision Tables In Excel Workbooks to learn more.

For more information on writing inferred entity rules in Excel, see: