Business Rules: Capturing the Most Elusive Information Asset - High-Performance Web Databases: Design, Development, and Deployment - page 114

MANAGING BUSINESS RULES
Like any other information asset, business rules must be managed prop-
erly to ensure they are accurate, reliable, accessible, and secure. The indi-
vidual responsible for meeting these objectives is the business rule admin-
istrator. This individual is most likely a data specialist from the data
administration staff.
Business Rule Administration
The business rule administrator's primary responsibility is to ensure
the quality and integrity of all business rules submitted to data administra-
tion. After business rules are collected, the administrator reviews each
with discipline and rigor to ensure it is atomic, complete, consistent, unbi-
ased, clear, and expressed in common business terms. Sharp analytical
skills, in addition to a strong data modeling background, help the business
rule administrator detect any inconsistencies between the business miles
and the enterprise data model. Contradictions between different business
area's viewpoints require the business rule administrator to be diplomatic
and unbiased.
It is the responsibility of the business rule administrator to distribute
rules to the appropriate areas for validation. The business rule administra-
tor must choose appropriate functional area representatives to analyze
rules, provide corrections, or indicate future changes based on anticipated
business changes. This helps eliminate partially correct business rules.
The business rule administrator is also responsible for ensuring that the
rules are accurate across all functional areas and for all participants in the
shared data environment. As business rules evolve, so do the roles and
responsibilities of the business rule administrator. In the future, the busi-
ness rule administrator may evolve into a repository manager.
Business Rule Ownership
As a shared data environment is implemented, it becomes increasingly
important to assign a guardian to each business rule. The term guardian
implies responsibility for maintaining rules that reflect most current busi-
ness practices. Some guidelines may be used in assigning business rule
guardians. The guardian for entity definition rules and example rules
should be the same as the guardian for the entity they describe. Similarly,
referential integrity and trigger business rules should be assigned to the
relationship that they describe. Identifying appropriate guardians for rela-
tionships, however, may not be so straightforward. When relationships
associate two entities that have the same guardian, the guardian of the rela-
tionship definition is likely to be the same as the entity guardian. When
relationships connect entities whose guardians are different, it may be dif-
ficult to determine the proper rule guardian. Likewise, if an entity has more