It had been one good break from work after a long time. I went off on a holiday for a week and am now back for good.

This month has been busy with the QuickRules.NET 3.0 SP2 getting released, and all of us in the product team working feverishly on the next major version also.I have been spending a lot of time with our developers consolidating core API’s, finalizing UI designs, and training some new joinees.

Now, one of the interesting use cases I have heard of in the recent weeks has been how Business Rules technology can help Casino’s manage their business better.

Now, lets see what a Casino does.

1. Casino’s offer customers a variety of games like slot machines, bingo, table games and so on.
2. Casino’s allow customers to book rooms.
3. Casino’s offer complementary offers to some customers as marketing promos. These can include free games, free reservation, discount airfare etc.
4. Casino’s work with the concept of a Customer Visit, also referred to as a Trip.
5. So, a Visit (Trip) includes playing sessions, room reservation, complement redemption etc and are generally defined based on a set of complex rules that are specific to a property, region and so on.

Most Casino’s already have systems in place that

1. Let them manage their game machines
2. Manage Customer’s Visits and Trips
3. Track player sessions
4. Track P and L for each player
5. Manage complementary offers to their customers based on their relationship history
6. And so on.

Some complex business logic is involved in deciding how to define a Customer Visit, or how to merge two overlapping Trips into one, or how to Split a Trip into two.

Additionally, a lot of complex logic is involved in deciding how to provide complementary offers, what to offer.

The sticky thing is that a lot of these business logic have direct monetary impact, and are required to change often.

So, how are these Rules Managed Now and what are the problems?

In most implementations that are old and ancient, much of business logic is captured in the form of stored procedures. VD tells me that when he was in Citibank, it was normal to write 4000 line stored procedures that check Financial transactions.

Then, it was easier to write the Stored procs, it was faster and easier to maintain in those conditions.

But the problems with that approach are obvious.

1. The turnaround times for effecting changes are high
2. The business logic gets more and more complex and maintenance costs are high
3. New enhancements are difficult to add to the system. This applies to both the Casino’s and other system manufacturers who supply software that Casino’s use.

Business Rules Technology to the Rescue

Business Rules Management Systems offer a scalable, easily expandable and maintainable solution to exactly these kinds of problems. Most of the complex business rules that people capture in stored procs or in code, are easily captured using the various Rule Formats available with a BRMS.

In this case, I would say that many of the business logic that defines what is a Customer Trip to a Casino, how to merge trips, how to split trips will be easily represented as Decision Tables, and sometimes as If Then Rules.

That is because these logic are typically explained using Tables and that is the natural way of representing this logic. Additionally, the Rule Engine allows for a clean separation of the Rule Logic and the rest of the application.

Modern data driven designs that require complex business rules to be applied on data, are incomplete without a business rules engine. From a Rule Management perspective, because the business logic is externalized as visible business rules, their management also becomes easy.

It is possible to actually let the business users make parametric changes to the rules as and when the business requirement arises.

Additionally, this logic can be easily independently tested without the rest of the application baggage.

And, very importantly, because the rules are completely externalized, out sourcing the development of this business logic function to either a parallel team or outside the company becomes a lot more easier. (More on that in another post).