Dynamically extensible rule-based expert-system shell for database-computing environments

摘要

A computer-implemented method for flexibly and efficiently representing and applying business rules in a transaction-processing relational database management system (RDBMS) environment. The method includes providing a deterministic rule-based expert-system shell. A late-binding mechanism within the RDBMS environment is also provided. An extensible data-maintenance mechanism is created for the rule-based expert-system shell. The extensible data-maintenance mechanism maintains sets of approval rules governing business transactions generated by other transaction-processing applications. The data-maintenance mechanism uses late binding to make the sets of rules and rule components stored in the data-maintenance mechanism arbitrarily extensible. A rule-processing engine applies the sets of approval rules stored in the extensible data-maintenance mechanism to business transactions originating in transaction-processing applications. The method provides for a plurality of approval-rule types, each making a qualitatively different contribution to the list of approvers required for any given business transaction. The method calculates the list of approvers required for a given business transaction by applying the appropriate set of approval rules to the transaction.