Modelling of the business rules using UML/OCL

Abstract

Business rules are a cruciaI business category because they describe how enterprises are conducting business. Their value in developing software systems, which must be susceptible to tit rapidly changing business requirements, has made them attractive also within information system domain. As the formalization of business ruIes becomes apart of the commonly practiced systems analysis process, it is desirable for there to be a singIe, coherent representation for all kinds of business rules. The Object Constraint Language (DCL) as a part of the Unitied Modelling Language (UML) provides the possibility to express business rules in formai and unambiguous manner. In this paper we investigate possibilities how to express different kinds of business rules with the UML/DCL, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages.