Time traveling using OPA

Question

Is it possible to use a form of time traveling using Oracle Policy Automation?
e.g.:
In 2006 we developed a rulebase for a company. We made backups of these rules.
In 2007 we used the 2006 as a basedocument for developing rules, a lot of the same variables are used but a lot of things in the calculation and rules are changed.
In 2008 a lot more is changed in the same way.
Is it possible to work with a variable 'ruleyear' and use a specific set of rules?
Gr.

Answer 1

There are two aspects to this.
The first is simply which set of rules to use.
You can do that easily with rules like:
the claimant is eligible for the benefit if
   the claimant is eligible for the 2006 benefit or
   the claimant is eligible for the 2007 benefit
the claimant is eligible for the 2006 benefit if
   the application date >= 2006-01-01 and
   the application date <= 2006-12-31 and
   <2006 eliigibility rules here>
the claimant is eligible for the 2007 benefit if
   the application date >= 2007-01-01 and
   the application date <= 2007-12-31 and
   <2007 eliigibility rules here>
In other words, just splice in which set of rules you want to use based on application date.
If you have some rules in common across the 2006 and 2007 rules, you can just share those pieces of logic between the lower level rules.
If you actually need to perform calculations that span the boundary between the time periods where rules vary (e.g. if calculating the sum of benefits across the year boundary) then you can use the "temporal reasoning" feature to control which rules are applied to which date ranges. For this case, I'd suggest you search for "temporal" in the on-line help for Oracle Policy Modeling more information.
Davin Fifield
Edited by: davinfifield on 21/12/2009 21:03
Edited by: davinfifield on 21/12/2009 21:04
Edited by: davinfifield on 21/12/2009 21:05