1. BRF+ – Introduction to Business Rule Framework

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SAP Business Rule Framework

A framework or a procedure without rules or approaches is only a tumult. With regards to dynamic or coherent reasoning a human cerebrum or in IT terms a business application depend on RULES and PROTOCOLS. They are the ones which makes a procedure sorted out. Imagine if there was no HTTP PROTOCOL in internet. Do you think the whole internet world and the innovation around the web would have been so consistent and coherent like today?

Business rules are set of guided requirements that administers the way you maintain your business. These guidelines can apply to each circle of efficient administrations, deals, activities, human assets. They can be as straightforward as rate/interest estimations and as mind boggling as nation’s complex tax collection laws.

For an application designer or an analyst, Business Rules are consistent articulations that decide and control your source code helping the product utilized in business procedures of an entity or organization.

Business Frameworks and Rules are not new to SAP. The following are the comparatively similar frameworks that SAP is utilizing in various business applications

  • Condition Technique – Output Management and Pricing
  • Derivation Tools – SAP Grants Management
  • Formula Builder (FoBu) – 4.0A Release
  • Hierarchical Derivation services (HDS) – SAP JAM
  • Internet Pricing Configurator (IPC) – SAP CRM
  • Rule Modeler – SAP CRM
  • Validation and Substitution Rules (VSR) – SAP FI, CO, AM, PS
  • Workflow Rules – Workflow

What is the need to present yet another framework exceptionally for rules?

Business Rules are constantly exposed to high recurrence of progress, evolution, modification and change. The below use case in some of the well-known modules will help us to put our case for the need for Business Rule Framework.

  • Pieces using a credit card scores, loan costs, interests and dividends (Banking)
  • Premiums choice on a insurance, brokerage, Valuation of agreements (Insurance part)
  • Worthy nature of a crude material (IS-OIL and Commodities division)
  • Dunning and Creditworthiness (IS-U and Telecom)
  • Hierarchies in Approvals (HR, Admin, Resourcing)
  • Item Estimating, Product Pricing, Billing (Logistics – Sales, Procurement)
  • Lead times and limits/threshold in Deliveries (Transportation Management)

For a product to be increasingly agile and lithe to high recurrence of changes with low support/maintenance and new releases, a layer of abstraction is required for the Rules on which the business is administered.

That is the reason Business Rule Framework can be said as a system of the business, by the business and for the business. (relatable articulation on democracy). I think we have put forth enough justifications. 🙂 Let us now look into the various components of BRFplus.

This first article will be a prologue to BRF+. We will discuss the basics of BRF+ including the components and architecture. In the subsequent tutorials we will dive deep into the details and learn how to implement each component technically and functionally.

SAP has created two Business Rules Management platforms, supporting both ABAP and JAVA environments:
1) BRFplus for AS ABAP and
2) SAP-Business Rule Management BRM for AS JAVA
both go under SAP Netweaver Decision Service Management (NW – DSM).

For ABAP AS all the parts of BRF+ belongs to package ‘SFDT_CORE’. FDT represents Formula and Derivation Tools.

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BRF+ Architecture

The architecture of BRF+ includes the below components:

  • BRF+ Rule Authoring Environment
  • BRF+ Rule Repository
  • BRF+ Rule Engine

BRFplus comes out of the bundle in SAP Netweaver AS ABAP. No separate license or fee is needed to activate and use BRF+.

The whole Rule writing condition runs on Web based UI. So make a point to check the nodes in ICF related to BRF+ are enabled and active.

Go to t-code SICF and check the below services.

  • /sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/fdt_wd_workbench
  • /sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/fdt_wd_object_manager
  • /sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/fdt_wd_catalog_browser

SAP_BC_FDT_ADMINISTRATOR – This role needs to be added in the user profile of the BRF+ Adminnistrator

Please refer to SAP KBA note 1109215 for more information.

BRF+ Object

BRF+ has ability of taking care of a whole decision making procedure and answer the outcome back to the application for additional processing. This decision making process can be achieved using the building block of BRF+ which is coined as BRF+ Object.

  • Data Objects
  • Expressions
  • Rules
  • Rulesets
  • Functions
  • Applications

Below flow diagram gives the high-level understanding of how the objects are aligned in the hierarchy of a BRF+ application. Keep in mind, this doesn’t imply that each BRF+ object can’t remain solitary or stand alone. You can process a standalone Decision table or use a Decision table combination with other BRF+ objects as per your business development use case.

Above is just the depiction of each BRF+ object and you can anticipate the functionality, implementation and behavior of each component in our up-coming follow up tutorials dedicated to each one of them.

Below is the topics we will cover in details in our future articles.

  • Catalog: Visualization and Navigation Help  
  • Application: Container for BRFplus Objects
  • Function: Interface Between Code and Rules
  • Ruleset: Collection of Rules
  • Rule: Central Entity
  • Expressions: Computational Units
  • Data Object: Data Carriers
  • Actions: Performing Tasks Outside of BRFplus

That’s all for today. We will come up with our next article soon with more interesting and practical stuffs in BRF+.

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