I1 - Strelka

Screencast download: strelka.avi
(Note: Xvid Codec from http://www.xvid.org is necessary for playback)

Description:

The languages used in the communication between domain analysts and domain experts for analyzing and documenting system requirements should not be ’technical’, but should allow visual and/or natural-language like vocabulary and rule expressions that can be understood by domain experts without extensive technical training.

The UML offers a visual language for specifying vocabularies. Some rule types, for example, integrity constraints (invariants) and derivation rules can be represented in UML models by means of the Object Constraint Language (OCL). The OCL is a formal language, which is difficult to understand for people without a technical background. In order to simplify rule modeling, the REWERSE Working Group I1 has developed

• a UML-based Rule Modeling Language (URML), which extends UML class models by adding rules, and
• Strelka, a tool for making URML models.

Strelka is implemented as a plug-in for the Fujaba Tool Suite, which is an open source UML case tool.

URML supports modeling of derivation rules, production rules and reaction rules. A rule is represented graphically as a circle with a rule identifier. Incoming arrows represent rule conditions or triggering events, outgoing arrows represent rule conclusions or produced actions.

In the podcast demo we demonstrate how Strelka can be used for modeling a real business rule from the insurance UServ case study. The demo starts with the introduction to the URML approach and description of the existing vocabulary for the sample rule. Then the rule is created in the tool and in order to deploy the rule into the rule systems, we show how the interchange markup of R2ML can be generated for the rule model.

I1 - Translators

Screencast download: translators.avi
(Note: Xvid Codec from http://www.xvid.org is necessary for playback)

Description:

In order to interchange rules between different rule languages and platforms, Working Group I1 has developed a rule interchange format R2ML. This format can be used to make translations from/to F-Logic, RuleML, Jess, Jena2 and partially JBoss Rules. The demo shows a service, which implements transformations and allows different clients to connect and interchange rules from/to R2ML. The current demo shows a web-client, implemented in PHP, for translation from the F-Logic XML to Jena via R2ML. The transformation consists of two steps: from F-Logic XML to R2ML and then from R2ML to Jess.

Poster: UML-Based Rule Modeling Language Poster: The REWERSE I1 Rule Markup Language R2ML