BizVR Basic Tutorial - How to create your first decision model and decision table

This tutorial covers the basic mechanics of creating a decision model using the BizVR Decision Modeler. Other tutorials cover the methodologies that can be applied to decision modeling

Business Problem

Suppose your business needs to determine the price of toys using their color, size and shape. Let’s assume these are the business rules

• R1: small, red toys cost $5
• R2: large, square toys cost $10
• R3: green, oval toys cost $15

Modeling the Decision in a Formal Editor

Let’s also assume that we want to automate these rules so they can be applied automatically when someone visits our web page and puts items in their cart. For this tutorial we will use the BizVR Decision Modeler (there are many other modeling tools available)

1. Click on this URL http://gnorion.com:3202/main and you should see this screen:

2. Enter your user id and password (or choose guest mode if you do not have one)

Once logged in you should see something similar to this.

• The default partition will be DECISION TABLE SAMPLES
• The folder named “Reference Examples” is a Workspace with some examples you can look at.
• Inside workspaces you can create projects.
• Inside projects you can create decisions.
• Inside decisions you can create decision tables and ontology definitions.
• Inside tables you can create individual rules
• Rules will consist of conditions and actions

3. Select DECISION TABLE SAMPLES in the left column and then click on Space to create a new Workspace

4. Give your workspace a name.

This workspace belongs to your user account. No one else can see the content of your workspace.

6. It will show up like this

If you need to change any of the details, select the workspace and then click on the Space option at the top.

7. Select it and click Project

8. Name the project and save it

9 It will show up like this

10. Select the project and click Decision

Fill out the fields and click Create

Notice the items for Properties/Inputs/Outputs/Documentation and also the option to import models from external sources such as Excel and DMN. We’ll come back to that later.

Click Create. Now your screen should look like this:

11 Click on Table to create a decision table

The diagram will look lik this

12. Now click on this decision table to enter its details (you can also add more empty decision tables and give them names)

Initially you will see this screen

look for this symbol which allows you to add rows to the table

13. Click to get into edit mode

14. Now enter color, size and shape as the three conditions and price as the single action and save the decision table

16. Now click the symbol three times to add three rule columns

17. Now complete the table by filling in the rules. Don't forget to save it

Save to the decision diagram using this button: Use this button to return to the main diagram

DO NOT USE THE BROWSER BACK BUTTON SINCE THAT WILL LOG YOU OFF

You should now see this

You can see the reference example here

Congratulations!

• Tutorial Reference Example

Next step - Update the decision properties with formal input and output declarations

• Tutorial Defining The Decision Properties You need to set the inputs and outputs before you can use the validator

• Tutorial - Using The Validation Tool

• Tutorial How to test a decision model <<<< BEING REVISED, NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, BUT STILL WORTH READING

• Tutorial Testing with a collection of inputs

• Tutorial Automating test data generation

• Tutorial Automating the checking of results

• Tutorial - Creating Decision Table Functions

• Tutorial How to test a decision model

• Tutorial - Creating Decision Table Functions

• Importing models from external sources

• Automatic Generation of Test Cases in JSON Format Using Validator

• Some alternative ways to structure the decision