What Not How: The Business Rules Approach to Application Development - Couverture souple

The way we build computer applications is about to change dramatically, thanks to a new development technology known as business rules. The key idea behind the technology is that we can build applications declaratively instead of procedurally--that is, we can simply state WHAT needs to be done instead of HOW to do what needs to be done. The advantages are obvious: ease and rapidity of initial development and subsequent maintenance, hardware and software platform independence, overall productivity, business adaptivity, and more.

What Not How: The Business Rules Approach to Application Development is a concise and accessible introduction to this new technology. It is written for both managers and technical professionals. The book consists of two parts: Part I presents a broad overview of what business rules are all about; Part II then revisits the ideas in Part I and shows how they fit squarely into the solid tradition of relational technology. Topics covered include:

• Presentation rules
• Database and application rules
• Building on the data model
• Potential advantages and disadvantages
• A new look at relational fundamentals
• Business rules and the relational model

Overall, the book provides a good grounding in an important new technology, one poised to transform the way we do business in the IT world.

Business rules are transforming the design of enterprise database systems, enabling companies to achieve dramatic benefits in speed, flexibility, productivity, and platform-independence. In What Not How, C. J. Date -- one of the world's leading database experts -- offers the first concise, non-technical introduction to business rules. Date explains how business rules allow applications to be developed declaratively -- by simply stating what needs to be done, rather than exactly how to do it. He introduces presentation, database and application rules; shows how to build data models that incorporate business rules; and offers practical guidance on minimizing the risks associated with the business rules approach. Then, in Part II, Date demonstrates how business rules build on classic relational technology, addressing key technical issues such as views, base tables, stored tables, relationships, and integrity constraints. What Not How is written for managers, database professionals, Web/e-commerce specialists -- and anyone who needs a faster, better way to deliver high-quality enterprise IT systems.