[jdom-interest] Questions on business rule validation

[Changqing Zhen]

Hi,

We are designing a system that processes tax returns
submitted as instances of XML documents.  We use XML
schema 1.0 recommended by W3C.  One question we are
trying to answer is related to the validation of
business rules.

While some business rules can be enforced in the
schema definitions, certain business rules cannot be
enforced in the schema.  More specifically, the
relationship between different data elements is hard
to enforce using schema alone - one example is the
value in data element A should equal the value of data
element B.

We can certainly write Java programs (taking advantage
of JDOM APIs) to enforce those types of business
rules.  The problem is that tax law changes each year,
and we do not want to change the code each year.  So
the questions we have are:

1) Are there any rule engines out there that
facilitate the validation of the business rules and
minimize the coding changes when business rules
change?

2) Can stylesheets be used to specify the business
rules that cannot be included in the schema
definitions?  If the answer is yes, the stylesheets
can be modified when business rules change without
need to change the code.

I'm not sure this is the right place to post such
questions.  In any case, thanks for your time and
help!

Charlie

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