Agile IT Architecture

I spent two days last week to study the Semantics of Business Vocabulary and business Rule or SBVR specification. SBVR is part of the OMG’s Model Driven Architecture (MDA) with the goal to capture specifications in natural language and represent them in formal logic so they can be machine-processed. It includes two specialized vocabularies: * Vocabulary for Describing Business Vocabularies which deals with all kinds of terms and meanings. * Vocabulary for Describing Business Rules which deals with the specification of the meaning of business rules, and builds on top of the previous vocabulary. The meanings are declined into concepts, questions and propositions. The meaning is what someone intends to express or understands. A phrase such as "We deny the invoice if the medical treatment was done after one year of the accident" has a clear meaning for a claim processor within a car insurance company. Analysts need to transform logically this meaning into concepts which has

AAAAAH. Today I discovered a very nice implementation of business rules done by HP. At home I have a HP photosmart 8250 printer who today displayed the message:"the ink cartridges are past its expiration date!" So each ink cartridge has a date and the code in the printer is testing this business rule to force me to buy new cartridges.... It is not enough to get printer drinking cartridge ink like we drink water under 100F, but in case we are not printing enough, this rule enforces business. Sad commercial behavior, bad rule, I'm just now hoping they are using a rule engine so I can change the rule on a fly... A dream.