Adding Constraints To A Business Object To Create A Constraint-Augmented Business Object (CABO) (18-Dec-2009)

Adding Constraints To A Business Object To Create A Constraint-Augmented

Business Object (CABO)

This technique enables a user to add one or more constraints to a business object

using a business object interface. Types of the one or more constraints may include

Pre-Condition constraints, Post-Condition constraints and Invariants. Pre-Condition

constraints are checked prior to execution of a method body. Post-Condition

constraints are checked after the execution of the method body. Invariants are checked

both at the beginning and end of the method body.

Further, the one or more constraints may be either mandatory constraints or advisory

constraints.

Violations caused due to mandatory constraints cause an application

Alternatively, in the

case of violations caused due to advisory constraints, the application continues to

execute and the violations are logged. Subsequently, logged information regarding

various violations caused due to the one or more constraints is available for review by a

business object developer. The logged information may further be used to generate an

HTML report. The HTML report may be used to validate one or more business rules

governing the business object.

In an exemplary instance, the business object represents a bank account. The bank

account may be a savings account or a money market account. One or more rules

applied to the bank account are added as one or more constraints to the business

object representing the bank account. The one or more constraints are added using a

Graphical User Interface (GUI).

Additionally, the business object may be developed

As an example, the following C++ code for a distributed Common Object Request

Broker Architecture (CORBA) application illustrates how the one or more constraints

are added to the business object. The example illustrates a deposit transaction in the

bank account. The technique may be applied for other transactions such as

withdrawal, etc. The one or more constraints are checked during the execution of the

C++ code and results are logged during runtime to generate an HTML report. In the example the

checking to a runtime log generated in HTML. The "METHOD" entry is used to log

Pre-Condition constraints and Post-Condition constraints. The "RNG" entries check for

ranges of values on one or more input parameters.

Additionally, "PRE" constraints

denote constraints that are checked prior to the execution of a business object method

body, and "POS" constraints denote constraints that are checked after the execution of

the business object method body.

(CABO) method is created from the business

object method by adding the one or more constraints to the business object. The

CABO method assumes the name of the original business object method (for example,

"deposit"),

A Constraint-

Augmented Business Object

while the original business object method is named by concatenating

executing the business object to terminate and log the...