IRC meeting minutes 26/02/07

Author: Maurizio De Tommasi
Emission date: 27/02/07
Version: 00.01
Participants:
•	Maurizio De Tommasi (beSoft m.detommasi@gmail.com)
•	Michael Neale (JBoss Rules michael.neale@gmail.com)

Subject: first ideas for a collaboration on SBVR and JBoss Rules
Agenda
1)	A walk through of what SBVR is (with some examples)
2)	A walk through of Drools
3)	SBVR plug in for eclipse
4)	Brainstorm for integration ideas
5)	Next steps
Meeting description and objectives
Discuss ideas and hypothesis for a collaboration.
Topics
Maurizio illustrated SBVR basic features (see Appendix A – SBVR overview). Then Michael talked about Drools and JBoss Rules pointing out that he is interested in what Maurizio is doing with SBVR for the following reasons:
-	SBVR is a standard, standards are good
-	A working eclipse tools already exists
-	Its natural language, business friendly
-	SBVR defined a vocabulary, something that JBoss Rules are not strong in at the moment
Michael and Maurizio agreed that, as an initial idea, it is feasible to take SBVR vocabulary and rules, and generate JBoss Rules DRL format (focusing on production rules at the beginning). In future it will possible to investigate how the SBVR could be integrated into JBoss engine (in order to do optimisation and logic validation, looking for inconsistencies, loops, gaps - missing rules etc). 
SBeaVeR (the SBVR Eclipse plugin) was originally meant as a proof of concept. It is an alpha version (available on SourceForge) and only the parser for the vocabulary has been implemented (it is based on ANTLR). Anyway now Maurizio is trying to find a way to make it a stable and useful open source tool. Since it is based on Eclipse, EPL licence is used, but other licences are possible as well. 
Michael stated that JBoss Rules division can help out in 2 ways: 
1)	providing support/contributing to what Maurizio and his team are doing
2)	possibly, funding some work if needs be. Both possibilities are feasible. 
Currently Maurizio has no fund to develop new features, he and his team is working on this in his spare time even if SBVR has been part of his job in the last 3 years.
Conclusions
The collaboration can be initially based on generation of JBoss Rules in DRL format starting from SBVR Structured English vocabulary and production rules. The collaboration can then result in a complete open source platform for business knowledge. 
Next step: a further meeting (in 1-2 weeks) to discuss in more detail the initial ideas.  
Action Points
Action	Description	Owner	Due date	Note	
Draft document	Produce a draft doc describing the first ideas and hypothesis in more detail.	Maurizio	1-2 weeks		
Wiki	Set-up a wiki for sharing minutes and documents.	Michael			

Appendix A – SBVR overview
SBVR defines a metamodel conceptualized for business people and designed to be used for business purposes, independently of information systems designs.
Its first aim is to allow business vocabularies construction and business rules definitions, enabling their interchange among organizations.
SBVR is self-describing i.e. SBVR itself is represented through SBVR Vocabularies and their related rules.
The SBVR Vocabulary defined in BRT (Business Rule Team) specification is extensible: since it is a vocabulary, it can be included in other vocabularies in order to create an ‘extended SBVR Vocabulary’. The latter can, for example, add new symbol for existing concepts or add new concepts along with symbols that represent them. In this way, even if the SBVR Vocabulary is based on English language, it is possible to create an alternative SBVR Vocabulary based on a different language; it should provide symbols from the different language for the concepts represented in the SBVR Vocabulary.
MDA is the underpinning architectural context, i.e. although its "conceptualised" to be independent of information systems, it can be used as a source form to generate artifacts for specific systems. SBVR could, in theory, be used for interchange between organisations - ultimately resulting in the generation of lower level executable artifacts. 
In MDA, SBVR is at CIM (Computation Independent Model) level. CIM is a model of the business not of the system. SBVR enables CIM-PIM model transformation.
SBVR has a particular focus on interchange and interoperability so SBVR specification defines SBVR-MOF/XMI mapping rules.
Another important feature of SBVR is consistency with formal logics. SBVR is underpinned by First Order Predicate Logic, but it also provides an extended formalization for higher-order types, that uses a restricted version of higher-order logic. In SBVR, a Rule is “an element of guidance that introduces an obligation or a necessity”. The two fundamental categories of Rule are:
- Structural Rule (necessities): are rules about how the business chooses to organize the things it deals with. Example: A customer has at least a rental reservation.
- Operative Rules (obligations): rules that govern the conduct of business activity. Example: A
customer who appears intoxicated or drugged must not be given possession of a rental car.
Logical Formulation (i.e. the SBVR representation of formal logic) represents a means to capture business semantics in a formal, abstract and language-independent way, using multiple forms of representation.
SBVR specification introduces a small number of English structures and common words in order to provide a simple and automatic mapping to SBVR concepts (Structured English). SBVR Structured English is just one of many possible notations that can map to the SBVR Metamodel.