Types of Business Logic

Business Logic Defined

The business logic of an organization is made up of all of the evaluations, decisions, transitions, transformations, requests and responses needed to carry out its business functions. Essentially, this logic is the "value add" of the entire business - what differentiates the business from its competitors and enables it to offer services and products to the marketplace.

The function of enterprise information systems is to capture this "value add" and enact it in automated processes. Business logic in these systems can be generally divided into:

• Transaction Logic - Logic that processes data to move it between consistent states at a point in time. For instance, transferring bank funds from checking to savings accounts. Here, each transaction is performed as a single set of operations.
• Process Logic - Logic that moves work between a series of stages or steps. For instance, when an overdraft will exceed $100, get a manager's approval. Here, steps can be performed by humans or systms and steps may be transactional or non-transactional
• Decision Logic - Logic that determines a result from input and some set of known facts. For instance, "Is this transaction suspicious?" Here, decisions are usually based on "trees" of human knowledge.

Breakdown of Business Logic

Fig 1 Business logic types

For most enterprise systems, the bulk of core business logic is transactional. This includes logic to validate input, aggregate data, derive new values, synchronize chains of updates between related data, constrain results, and trigger events based on the results. The Versata Logic Suite for Transaction Logic automates this type of logic.

The next most common type of logic is process-oriented. Process logic can sequence multiple transactions over time. Process steps can be long-lived, performed in parallel, interrupted, and escalated. The Versata Process Logic Add-on automates this type of logic.

Decision logic is typically reserved for complex but critical points in the application. Decisions can automate the flow of steps in a process, for instance. They can decide the "when" and "to whom" to escalate workflow steps. Versata can be used with 3rd party products such as ILOG JRules for this type of logic.

Fig 2 Integrating Transaction, Process and Decision Logic

Business Logic IS the Asset

Given its strategic importance to the enterprise, it is vital that business logic be elevated from source code of applications and Java components.

The Versata Logic Suite elevates business logic to an understandable, sharable, reusable and maintainable business asset that spans generations of systems and development teams. Uniquely, Versata can directly execute this logic to automate the critical core of enterprise applications.