What Not How : The Business Rules Approach to Application Development

"What I think Date has done is nothing less than to lay out the foundational concepts for the next generation of business logic servers based on predicate logic. Such a breakthrough should revolutionize application development in our industry -- and take business rules to their fullest expression." --Ronald G. Ross, Principal, Business Rule Solutions, LLC Executive Editor, DataToKnowledge Newsletter 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. It 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 I.T. world.

C. J. Date is an independent author, lecturer, researcher, and consultant specializing in relational database systems, a field he helped pioneer. Among other projects, he was involved in technical planning for the IBM products SQL/DS and DB2. He is best known for his books, in particular, An Introduction to Database Systems (7th edition, Addison-Wesley, 2000), the standard text in the field, which has sold well over half a million copies worldwide. Mr. Date is widely acknowledged for his ability to explain complex technical material in a clear and understandable fashion.

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