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Generating a database model from natural language expressions of business rules

  • US 7,613,676 B2
  • Filed: 07/27/2004
  • Issued: 11/03/2009
  • Est. Priority Date: 07/27/2004
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A computerized method for generating a normalized database model from natural language expressions of business rules comprising:

  • accessing a plurality of business rules, the business rules being in a linguistic form having a predefined syntax or format that conforms to grammatical rules of a natural language, and wherein the business rules comprise one or more definitional rules or authorization rules, wherein definitional rules define how information is derived or computed from other information or define how certain propositions become facts upon the occurrence of one or more events, and wherein definitional rules that define how certain propositions become true upon the occurrence of some event have at least a description of one or more events and one or more declarations, which are statements of propositions, each proposition including a fact type, that become true upon the event and wherein the authorization rules define authorizations of business actors to provide information or to request information;

    creating a first empty list of fact types;

    for each business rule that is a definitional rule, and based on the rules being definitional rules, adding all of the fact types of the business rule to the first list, the fact types being the declarations which are the statements of propositions, wherein the fact types are expressed in a sentence form, and wherein each of the fact types includes one or more roles, each of which is represented by a placeholder in the sentence form;

    for each business rule that is an authorization rule for provision of information indicating what information can be provided by a business actor, that comprises one or more authorized provisions of information corresponding to one or more fact types, and based on the rules being authorization rules for provision of information indicating what information can be provided by a business actor, adding the corresponding fact types to the first list, the fact type being expressed in a sentence form and wherein each of the fact types includes one or more roles, each of which is represented by a placeholder in the sentence form;

    for each role of each fact type in the first list, the role having a type, if the type of the role is not of a lexical type, adding the type to a second list of types;

    processing the types in the second list to create one or more database tables for the types in the second list; and

    processing the fact types in the first list by determining for each of the fact types, if a fact type is a basis for describing a pre-defined reference scheme for the fact type, the reference scheme being a pre-defined scheme by which a thing of some type is identified by relating the thing to signifiers or to other things identified by signifiers, and for each fact type in the second list which is not a basis for describing a predefined reference scheme, creating a database table for the fact type, the database table including a type column for each role of the fact type, while not creating a database table for each fact type in the second list which is a basis for describing a predefined reference scheme.

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