Understand Oracle Policy Automation's Key Concepts

If you are new to Oracle Policy Automation then it will be useful to have some familiarity with concepts such as rulebases, entities, attributes and relationships.

For more information about these (and other) concepts, refer to the Oracle Policy Modeling Help included with Oracle Policy Modeling, particularly the Key Concepts section.

Attribute

An attribute is a single unit of data or fact, including a statement or phrase to describe the meaning, for example:

 

The nearest equivalent concept in CRM On Demand is a field, but an attribute is not necessarily a stored value, as all values referred to in rules are attributes. Attributes whose value is proven by a rule are known as intermediate attributes if they are also used by other rules, or top-level attributes if they are not.

Decision Report

A decision report starts with a single outcome value and describes how the value was determined. It has a structure that mirrors the rules in the rulebase with attribute values at each node in the structure so each step in the decision process can be understood.

Determinations Server

Determinations Server is a component of Oracle Policy Automation Runtime that allows rulebases to be called through a web service. Determinations Server is the means by which CRM On Demand calls rulebases when using the Oracle Policy Automation Connector for CRM On Demand.

Entity

An entity is a grouping of related attributes that describes a single thing, such as a person or a company.

The Global Entity

All rulebases have a single global entity (there can never be more than one). The global entity is a catch-all for those attributes that cannot be attached to specific entities in a rulebase.

When conducting an interview through Web Determinations, the global entity is always the starting point for the interview. Any other entities collected or pre-seeded must be able to be collected from the global entity (that is, there must be a relationship hierarchy to the global entity).

See:

Understand the different types of entities in the Oracle Policy Modeling Help

Interview

An Interview is an interactive experience between a user and Oracle Policy Automation. Oracle Policy Automation uses the rulebase to determine what goals are defined, and what information needs to be collected and in order to determine those goals. Screens and Screen Flows can be defined using Oracle Policy Modeling to customize the Interview experience.

The Oracle Policy Automation Connector for CRM On Demand uses Oracle Web Determinations to conduct an interview. Web Determinations can be accessed through CRM On Demand or as a standalone web application.

Interviews can be defined to have a very specific order of data collection when a screen order or flow has been defined.

See:

Interviews and Flows in the Oracle Policy Modeling Help

Outcome

The outcome is usually a top-level attribute that has been requested to be determined in a mapping configuration. From version 10.0 onwards of Oracle Policy Automation Runtime, it is possible to specify a relationship as an outcome.

Relationship

A relationship is a link between entities, such as 'the employees' (the list of people employed by a particular company).

Rulebase

A complete self-contained set of rules defined with Oracle Policy Modeling, used to draw business-level conclusions in a particular domain (for example, eligibility for unemployment benefits). A rulebase normally also includes the abstract definition of a data model; that is, the set of entities and attributes required by the rules in order to reach a conclusion.

Screens

Screens are displayed as part of an Oracle Policy Automation interview. They are a screen (or page) which either prompts a user to enter information (a question screen), or displays information (a summary screen). Screens, screen order and screen flows can be created in Oracle Policy Modeling, or they can be generated automatically during an interview (if a screen has not been defined to collect the information needed to determine a goal).

See:

Interviews and Flows in the Oracle Policy Modeling Help

Time-based Reasoning

Time-based reasoning is the ability for an attribute to have a value that changes over time using change points.

For example a person's income could change over time as their situation changed but Policy Automation allows it to be represented as a single attribute and for rules to be written as if it had a single value.

Web Determinations

Web Determinations is an interactive web application for conducting interviews.

 

See:

How Web Determinations communicates with CRM On Demand