Business Rules & Events: Two Questions for Zachman re: 3.0
The next time I have dinner with John, I have two questions for him. (He knows I always have new questions for him every time I see him, so he’s more or less prepared for it after all these years.) If anyone talks to him sooner, be sure to ask John these two questions … and please post the answers(!). 1. Where are business rules? (I think I know what he’ll say about this one.) 2. Why did events disappear in this rendition of the Framework? (I don’t know the answer to this one, and though subtle, it may prove to have the most important implications of any adjustment he’s made this time around.)Tags: business architecture, business model, Business Rules, enterprise architecture, Zachman, Zachman Architecture Framework
Ronald G. Ross
Ron Ross, Principal and Co-Founder of Business Rules Solutions, LLC, is internationally acknowledged as the “father of business rules.” Recognizing early on the importance of independently managed business rules for business operations and architecture, he has pioneered innovative techniques and standards since the mid-1980s. He wrote the industry’s first book on business rules in 1994.
Sally Bean
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Ron, in answer to question 2, I think you’ll find that events disappeared from the Framework, not in this version, but in the transition from version 1 to version 2. When I asked John about this, he said that events were a composite concept rather than a primitive one, relating process and timing. So an event is probably one of those little lines running horizontally, between column 2 and column 5.
I think that events are a very important concept so have some reservations about the fact that they are buried in this way. But at least they are there……
Keri
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Re. your Question-2 (“Why did events disappear in this rendition of the Framework?”) here’s what I heard John say at the Framework 3 Launch Event: ‘Event’ did not disappear; the concept was relabeled as ‘moment’. (And ‘cycle’ became ‘interval’.) As far back as the late 80s, when we worked with John in the GUIDE project to define the Framework, the term ‘event’ was problematic. Soooo many tussles over whether ‘event’ was a span of time or not (e.g., isn’t the Superbowl an ‘event’? Isn’t Hurricane Irene an ‘event’?) Countless hours (day, decades) lost in this Great Debate. So, in Fw3 John has changed the labels in the hopes of making the ‘point in time’ vs. ‘duration’ distinction clearer.