About this Course

This course is also available as self-paced virtual (e-learning) course, Developing Rule Solutions in IBM Operational Decision Manager V8.5 (ZB383). This option does not require any travel.

This course is also available as instructor-led online course Developing Rule Solutions in IBM Operational Decision Manager V8.5 (Remote) (VB383). Please note that this option does not require any travel.

This 5-day instructor-led course introduces developers to IBM Operational Decision Manager V8.5. In this course, you learn the concepts and skills that you need to design, develop, and integrate a business rule solution with Operational Decision Manager.

The course begins with an overview of Operational Decision Manager, which is composed of two main environments: IBM Decision Server for technical users and IBM Decision Center for business users. The course outlines the collaboration between development and business teams during project development.

Through instructor-led presentations and hands-on lab exercises, you learn about the core features of Decision Server, which is the primary working environment for developers. You design a business rule application, and work with the object models that are required to author and execute rule artifacts. You gain experience with rule deployment and execution within various types of client applications. You work extensively with Rule Execution Server and learn how you can integrate decision services within an enterprise environment.

In addition, you become familiar with rule authoring so that you can support business users to set up and customize the rule authoring and validation environments. You also learn how to identify governance issues and use Operational Decision Manager features to support decision governance.

The lab environment for this course uses Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition.

Audience Profile

This course is designed for application developers.

At Course Completion

Upon completing this course, students will be able to:

• Describe the benefits of implementing a decision management solution with Operational Decision Manager
• Identify the key user roles that are involved in designing and developing a decision management solution, and the tasks that are associated with each role
• Describe the development process of building a business rule application and the collaboration between business and development teams
• Set up and customize the business object model (BOM) and vocabulary for rule authoring
• Implement the execution object model (XOM) that enables rule execution
• Orchestrate rule execution through ruleflows
• Author the rule artifacts to implement business policies
• Debug business rule applications to ensure that the implemented business logic is error-free
• Set up and customize the testing and simulation environment for business users
• Package and deploy rulesets to test and production environments
• Integrate decision services for managed execution within an enterprise environment
• Build efficient and easy-to-maintain business rule client applications
• Test, monitor, and audit execution of decision services
• Explain governance issues and identify Operational Decision Manager features that support decision governance

Prerequisites

You should have:

• Experience with the Java programming language and object-oriented concepts
• Experience with Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)
• Knowledge of Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE)
• Basic knowledge of Extensible Markup Language (XML)

Course Outline

1. Course introduction
2. Introducing IBM Operational Decision Manager V8.5
3. Operational Decision Manager: Business rules
4. Exercise: Operational Decision Manager in action
5. Programming with business rules
6. Exercise: Setting up rule projects
7. Developing object models
8. Exercise: Working with the BOM
9. Exercise: Refactoring
10. Orchestrating ruleset execution
11. Exercise: Working with ruleflows
12. Authoring rules
13. Exercise: Exploring action rules
14. Exercise: Authoring action rules
15. Exercise: Authoring decision tables and decision trees
16. Customizing rule vocabulary with categories and domains
17. Exercise: Working with static domains
18. Exercise: Working with dynamic domains
19. Queries and ruleset extraction
20. Exercise: Queries and ruleset extraction
21. Debugging rules
22. Exercise: Executing rules locally
23. Exercise: Debugging a ruleset
24. Enabling tests and simulations
25. Exercise: Enabling tests and simulations
26. Managing deployment
27. Exercise: Managing deployment
28. Executing rules with Rule Execution Server
29. Exercise: Exploring the Rule Execution Server console
30. Exercise: Executing rules with Rule Execution Server in Java SE
31. Exercise: Executing rules with Rule Execution Server in Java EE
32. Exercise: Executing rules as a hosted transparent decision service (HTDS)
33. Auditing and monitoring ruleset execution
34. Exercise: Auditing ruleset execution through Decision Warehouse
35. Exercise: Testing ruleset execution in Rule Execution Server console
36. Working with the REST API
37. Exercise: Working with the REST API
38. Introducing decision governance
39. Course summary