But with issues such as deregulation and a major increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions, business rules are changing rapidly. Most IT organizations can't keep up. Software vendors share some of the blame, too. Most development tools have little, if any, support for defining, implementing, and managing business rules separately from implementation logic. Even developers with a thorough understanding of business policies often have difficulty translating that knowledge into procedural code.
Data modeling is one of the first steps in a development project.
The data model defines the structural business rules by defining the terms and facts connecting those rules. Unfortunately, there's usually no link between the application data model and the actual run-time system. Portions of the structural rules, as represented in the data model, are implemented in multiple systems and are inconsistently maintained across systems. Also, there's no easy way to track more-complex business rules. Hidden Problems Problems with inconsistent business rules often occur below the surface, where business management can't see them.