Tool Support to Implementing Business Rules in Database Applications

In many cases, the programmer may require to encode business rules into the database applications. To do this, a large number of program elements may need to be examined by the programmer, to determine which have the capacity to violate a new rule and if so what minimal changes are required to prevent such violations. This process can be time-consuming, and even seasoned programmers can miss difficult and obscure cases in the mass of code. In this paper, we describe a static source code analysis technique to assist the programmer in enforcing business rules in a way that cuts down the amount of irrelevant code to be examined. Our technique derives all the possible ways in which a new business rule can be violated by the programs in the system being modified, and the specific program elements responsible.