A Modelling Approach for Handling Business Rules and Exceptions

A modelling approach for handling business rules and exceptions to support the development of information systems (IS) is presented to enable business rules to be captured rigorously and at the same time to allow handling exceptions. The approach is developed by extending the workflow modelling with Norm Analysis. The workflow modelling is one of the methods of object-oriented information engineering (OOIE), whereas Norm Analysis is one of the methods of a semiotic approach towards IS. The workflow modelling is concerned with the behavioural perspective of IS and describes the sequence of events of a business process. As for Norm Analysis, it identifies responsibilities and rules that govern human behaviour. It also recognizes conditions and constraints of the actions driven by their responsibilities. The paper describes the base methods briefly and illustrates the applications of these two methods on their own. Added value for extending the workflow modelling With Norm Analysis is then identified, and the extended method is presented. The extended method is applied in a case study of an equipment servicing company for analysis of the work processes and designing a computer support system. The results of the project show that the method provides an effective way to model the business processes rigorously and yet the business users still have the control and flexibility to handle exceptions.