Here is a list of some advantages of externalizing business rules:
Explicit documentation of business practice decisions. Externalizing
them gets the rules out of people's heads and out of the application code
making it available for others to view and understand.
Clearer understanding of application behavior. Externalization
makes it possible to inspect the application to see which business rules are
being applied, when, and under what circumstances.
Reuse of rules across business processes. Separating rules from
the business logic of the application makes it easy to reuse a business practice
decision in a consistent fashion.
Increased consistency of business practices. Because externalized
rules promote reuse and facilitate clear understanding of business practice
decisions, they provide a basis for improving business practice consistency
across applications.
Decreased maintenance and testing costs. Externalized rules have
a clearly defined scope and are not tightly coupled to the application code.
This makes them easy to modify and quick to test, decreasing costs and improving
cycle time.
Improved manageability of business practice decisions. Externalization,
change history, and inspectability all promote clear ownership and consequently
a better definition of who can change rules and under what circumstances.
Increased confidence in predicting the business impact of proposed
changes. Because rules are available for inspection, have well-defined
scope, and are not tightly coupled to application business logic, they make
it easy to understand the likely impact of changes and to predict whether
contemplated modifications or additions will have unwanted ripple
effects.
Easy ability to identify and correct conflicting business rules in
different parts of the business. Externalized rules make it easy to check
that rules being used in two different parts of an application, or even two
different applications dealing with different parts of the business, are consistent.
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