The S1000D User Forum 2018 in New Orleans, September 10-13, is getting closer every day. Only a week from now. Many who are going there are curious what discussions will emerge and what connections will be made, what interactions will take place.

I am not going to the S1000D User Forum this year, but a little book I created with the main reason to give back to the community, which I enjoy and am proud of being a part of, will be there instead of me.

Susanne Berg from Mekon Ltd will take part in the User Forum and have my book with her. Susanne was the one who had the idea for me to write a series of short articles on the S1000D Business Rules and she was also the one who agreed to grant me the copyright so that I could publish the book.

With this book, I hoped to alleviate the overwhelming and annoying feeling rising with many of the S1000D implementers when they face the necessity of defining the project or organizational business rules.

As mentioned above, Susanne will have the book with her at the forum. So if you are taking part in the S1000D User Forum this year, then I invite you to approach Mekon’s exhibitor’s stand and take a look at the book.

And to get a taste of what this little booklet (less than 100 pages long) is about and how it could help you, I suggest that you read the article “Bitesize Business Rules Series as a Book,” which tells the story of the article series on Mekon’s website and the book.

#s1000d #businessrules #decisionmaking #knowledgebase #lifemadeeasier

To find out more about S1000D in general and S1000D business rules in particular, check out the following books and content:

I have written recently a new article for Mekon’s Bitesize series on S1000D business rules. It addresses two XML attributes, the use of which can change Business Rules production process from slow and tedious to efficient, and maintenance costs of technical publications from high to reasonable. These attributes are the business rule Decision Point Priority (brDecisionPointPriority), and business rules Severity Level (brSeverityLevel). Both attributes are present in the new business rules Document (brDoc) Schema introduced in the S1000D Issue 4.2, whereas the latter (brSeverityLevel) has been also added to the well-known BREX Schema. To find out more about these attributes click on the title of the article “brDoc: The Attributes You Shouldn’t Ignore” or here.

(Credits: Photograph ©canva.com with the keyword characteristic)

To learn more about business rules in general and about S1000D business rules in particular, and to keep them under control, check out the following books:

and resources:

If you implement S1000D, then you also work with S1000D business rules. You either have to create them or follow them, or both.

The S1000D specification is several thousand pages long, has several tenths of XML Schema and as many objects to support its use in any of the download packages at www.s1000d.org.

And if you try to address the Business Rules Decision Points (BRDP) and define your project’s or organization’s business rules you will see that you will have to address 427 in S1000D Issue 4.2, 552 in Issue 4.1 and over 700 in Issue 4.0.1.

That sounds pretty overwhelming, doesn’t it?

Susanne Berg from Mekon Ltd suggested about two years ago that I write short articles for their blog category called “Bitesize Business Rules.” I agreed and discovered that writing in little bits about business rules, did make the topic less overwhelming and more understandable. With Mekon’s permission, I have gathered all the articles published there, revised, and had them professionally edited. And today, I have published a little book with the title brDoc, BREX, and Co.: S1000D Business Rules Made Easier.

Based on the feedback to the articles of the “Bitesize Business Rules” series, the bite-sized articles on business rules can help you to “taste” and “digest” one aspect of S1000D business rules (and to some extent also implementation) at a time.

I hoped to make the book available before the S1000D User Forum that will take place in New Orleans this year on September 10-13.

And first I thought the title of this post could be a good joke, but now I think such a book could be “digested” even better when you read it in an atmosphere a bit remote from the actual work. While at it, you could get a new perspective on the complex and multi-dimensional topic of S1000D business rules.

If you read this far, then I invite you to check out the description of this little book here.