VALIDATION AND VERIFICATION OF DECISION-MAKING RULES

A methodology for the validation and verification of decision making r ules is presented. The methodology addresses the general problem of de tecting problematic cases in a set of rules expressed as statements in formal logic. This representation of the decision rules makes the pro blem general in terms of application domains, and also provides an ana lytical base for defining errors. The approach is based on viewing a r ule base as an organization of information that flows from one process (rule) to another. The key step in the methodology is the transformat ion of the set of decision rules into an equivalent Petri net. The sta tic and dynamic properties of the resulting Petri net are shown to rev eal patterns of structures that correspond to the problematic cases. T he techniques presented in this paper are based on theory and are supp orted by software tools. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.