CER rule sets are created and maintained in the CER Editor. CER rule sets are stored as XML data on the application database. The XML data for a CER rule set adheres to the CER-supplied rule schema.
CER also includes a comprehensive rule set validator which can detect errors in your rule set before allowing your rules to execute. You can validate your rule set in the CER Editor. See CER Editor Global Menu
CER supports you running rule sessions in:
CER rule sets are fully dynamic. In production environments, CER supports the uploading of changes to rule sets which take effect when published; no rebuilding or redeploying of your application is required.
The testing of CER rule sets can be at whatever level suits you. You may choose to provide detailed test data for a complete "business scenario", and/or you can create isolated tests for parts of your rule set without having to carefully set up large amounts of input data.
For example, the determination of a person's eligibility for child benefit might be a complex calculation involving (amongst other things) the comparison of the person's total income to a certain threshold. Furthermore, the calculation of the person's total income is itself a complex calculation, involving decisions regarding whether certain types of income are "countable" for the purposes of child support eligibility.
When testing the eligibility calculation, in traditional development you might have to carefully set up income data to provide a calculated total income, which in turn you can use to test the eligibility calculation. Depending on the complexity of the calculations, this set up of data might be very tedious to do and be very brittle to change.
By comparison, in CER you can simply "stub out" a calculation without having to supply low-level detailed data; CER makes it extremely straightforward to produce a test which effectively says "for the purposes of this test, the total income is $10 - do not attempt to calculate the total income during this test".
This CER facility makes it easy to test all the functionality in your rule set at a level that makes sense.
The authoring environment also includes tools to assist with development and testing of your rules:
An HTML extract of the structure of your rule sets.
An HTML representation of the data in your rule objects.
Reports the extent of your rule set which was exercised by your tests.