Defining Abstract Decision Tables

• Abstract decision tables can be designed to solve certain kinds of problems at a very generic level.
• It does this by making use of function calls that have no implementation (in the abstract model)
• In order to use an abstract decision the user will need to supply implementations of those functions as decision tables.
• This is similar to the concept of Interfaces in programming languages

In this scheduling example, the table matches resources to tasks based on the rules contained in the function canPerform. In the abstract decision there is no implementation of this function.

To use this abstract decision the user will: Create his own business entities as subclasses of Resources and Task (using the inheritance mechanism)

The abstract table might look like this:

And the user would need to write their specific rules in a table like this: