Providing traceability in business rules to customers of a commercial organisation

: Making business rules used in a commercial organisation traceable by applying a reference architecture for traceability

Abstract

This research examines in which way business rules used by commercial organisations, can be made traceable by using a proposed reference architecture for traceability, called RA4T. Traceability of such rules and effects on the customers of these organisations is beneficial to provide more transparency to customers. The resulting system has functionalities to explain to these customers how and why conclusions are made. Controlled Natural Language (CNL) is used in this architecture to define and clarify business rules. A CNL is used because it is a controlled and standardised language for business rules; which makes it generic to apply to all sorts of companies. Semantics of Vocabulary and Business Rules (SBVR) is chosen to use as CNL, because of the commercial context: SBVR is especially in place in commercial organisations. In this research, the business context of, and applied rules within, EU-Rent is used to build a case study. EU-Rent is used as an example of an organisation, because it is fictional and multiple studies are based on this organisation – therefore a large variety of sources is accessible. Multiple scenarios are written out to examine in which way RA4T is applicable to a commercial organisation.

Date of Award	1 Feb 2023
Original language	English
Supervisor	Lloyd Rutledge (Examiner) & Ella Roubtsova (Co-assessor)