IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Create processes in IBM Process Designer > Modeling processes > Building services > Building a Decision service

Testing a Decision service

When you have finished creating a Decision service and authoring rules in a rule component, such as a BAL Rule component, you can test the Decision service to determine if the rules are being applied as you intended. If an error or exception occurs within a rule, you will see messages about the error during testing, and you can debug the specific rule component or rule that caused the error.

To test a rule component and the rules it contains, you can load the Decision service with default data and then step through the activities in your business process definition to see the generated process data as it interacts with the business rules you have defined.

For example, if you set a breakpoint on an activity that has an associated Decision service, you can make sure that the Decision service is producing the data you expect, and make sure that there are no error messages or exceptions being produced by the Decision service as it runs.

Procedure

To test a Decision service, complete these steps:

1. Verify that you are working in the business process definition that contains the Decision service you want to test.

2. Click to select the activity or decision gateway in the business process that has the Decision service associated with it.
3. Set a breakpoint in the activity. Set breakpoints at specific locations in the process where you want the process flow to pause during testing so that you can determine the status of the process, and identify any errors that might have occurred.

4. Click the Decision service name to open the rules in the rule editor.

5. Click the Run service icon

   in the banner above the rule editor.

6. When Process Designer prompts you to change to the Inspector interface, click Yes. The Inspector displays red tokens both in the BPD diagram and the execution step tree, which provides a hierarchical view of the execution state, showing the step that is currently running in the active process instance.

• Debugging a Decision service
  Debug a rule component in a Decision service using the Inspector perspective and the debugging feature in Process Designer. Use these testing functions to can examine how the Decision service operates in each step of the process execution, which provides a more detailed inspection than simply stepping through the process.
• Exception messages in Decision service testing
  

  You can review exception messages that result from Decision service testing. The exceptions provide information that is helpful when you are troubleshooting Decision service execution errors.

Building a Decision service

Related tasks:
Scenario: Exporting rules to a Rule Execution Server