For example, on the above picture we can see seven different goals that can be selected from a combo-box “Select GOAL”. It may be useful to select and analyze all of them to better understand the behavior of our decision model. In this case, the goal “Application Status” and the test “Test 1” have been selected. The Analyzer shows that the goal “Application Status” is determined as “Accepted”. The explanations are presented in the table “Executed Business Rules”:



This table includes only those rules that were actually executed for this particular test case. All rules are shown in the order they were executed. The first column contains a name of a decision table and an order number for every executed rule inside this table. The second column shows rule formulations being transformed into IF-THEN text format.

From the decision explanation point of view, the most important column is the last one “Variables and Values”. This column shows the values of all involved decision variables at the moment when the rule was executed. The real-world experience proves that it is critically important to be able to analyze the values of different decision variables during rules execution, otherwise it could be very difficult to understand the behavior of complex decision models.

After this table, the Analyzer generates the table “Decision Variables” presented in the following picture:



It contains descriptions of all decision variables distributed between business concepts as specified in the decision model's glossary. Based on the interest of your analysis, you can collapse (“-“) and/or expand (“+”) different business concepts to concentrate only on those you are currently interested in.

For every input and output decision variable the table “Decision Variables” shows its final value after the decision model execution. If you click on “?” next to the decision variable, and the table "Executed Business Rules" will be filtered to include only those rules that deal with this decision variable. A click on the big button “WHY” will restore the entire table.

You may try the Analyzer with a predefined set of decision models online without any installation. And you may add your own custom decision model and analyze its behavior. To run Analyzer from our remote server, please click on http://amazon.openrules.com:8080/OpenRulesAnalyzer/

If you want to install Analyzer locally, it is available as a part of the standard complete installation as a separate workspace "openrules.analyzers". You may deploy this project on your own Apache Tomcat server by simply running “deploy.bat”. Make sure that you already have "openrules.forms.lib" deployed on the same server - otherwise click-on openrules.forms.lib/deploy.bat. Then you may start a web application “OpenRulesAnalyzer” with you own browser using “run.html”.
You may add your own decision model to the local version of the Analyzer. To do that you should add a folder with your decision model to the folder “war/DecisionModels/” and properly modify the file "war/GUI/Main.xls". Your own model should be organized similarly to already included decision models. The table "testCases" is mandatory.

Creating and Executing Custom Decision Models  - Deprecated (consider using Decision Manager)

You may create and execute your own decision models using the provided "DecisionModel.xls" as a prototype. To do that, you need to do the following:

  1) Download the standard Excel-based model "DecisionModel.xls" under your own name, e.g. "MyDecisionModel.xls"
  2) Modify this file by defining your own goals, decision tables, and test cases using Excel only (no custom Java files allowed)
  3) Upload your Excel file to any publicly available web directory such as http://openrules.com/sandbox
  4) Execute your decision model from the Analyzer by selecting CUSTOM MODEL and entering your Goal and Excel file URL such as http://openrules.com/sandbox/MyDecisionModel.xls. 
  5) Analyze the execution results.

Notes

1) You may upload your Excel file to any web server. In particular, you may use OpenRules public repository "http://openrules.com/sandbox/" - send a request to support@openrules.com to get a password. You may use any FTP client such as FileZilla for the uploading. When you install and open FileZilla, you may access the OpenRules repository by  creating a new connection with the following attributes:

• Host: ftp://openrules.com

• Username: or_sandbox

• Password: <password provided by support@openrules.com>

It will open the remote folder "http://openrules.com/sandbox" allowing you to upload your decision models such as "MyDecisionModel.xls".

2) Keep in mind that your uploaded files will be visible to other users and OpenRules is not responsible for any confidential information.
3) The folder "http://openrules.com/sandbox/" contains many other sample projects.  You may execute them as well by entering the proper URLs and goal names in the Analyzer. But please do not modify any of these projects. While everybody always may upload their decision models again, you probably would not like if other people mess with your remote models.

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