Advanced Modeling

Overview

After mastering the basics of DMN, you’re ready to explore more advanced modeling techniques. This guide builds on your foundation to help you create sophisticated decision models that can handle complex business scenarios. We’ll cover advanced features like Business Knowledge Models (BKMs), complex data types, list operations, and context expressions. Throughout this guide, we’ll use a travel insurance pricing example to illustrate these concepts. This guide describes the Decision Model & Notation (DMN) structure that could be used as a basis for assessing travel insurance premiums based on traveler details, trip details, and associated risks with their locations and medical conditions.

The Business Problem to be Solved

In this decision, the company has a few factors that impact how much the insurance premium will be for the customer looking to go on a trip. There are a few factors that impact this, there’s a base price of the premium itself, we will look at claims that have been done by this person, a medical condition assessment and a destination risk factor. After gathering these sub-decisions, we will build a final price for the premium for the trip.

Walkthrough of the Decision Building

Let’s break down the process of building out this travel insurance decision model:

Identify the main decision and sub-factors

The main decision is calculating the Final Premium
We’ve also identified four key sub-factors that feed into this:
- Base Premium by Age
- Claims Assessment
- Medical Condition Assessment
- Destination Risk Factor

This aligns with the DMN principle of breaking down complex decisions into smaller, modular sub-decisions. As we saw in this guide, the top-down approach allows all of the components to be operated and built separately.

Start at the End!

With DMN, the best way to model a decision is with the final question to be answered at the top. This aligns with the Top-Down design approach. While it will be mapped first, it will be the last decision we will ultimately build, which is the Final Premium:

Combine the outputs of the four sub-decisions
Uses a simple mathematical formula
Demonstrates how modular decisions can be composed

Start Mapping Out Each Decision

Base Premium: A simple decision table mapping age ranges to base premium amounts. Uses Unique hit policy since each age maps to one premium.
Claims Assessment: Filters the claim history to only consider approved claims. Uses Collect Max to return highest value. Demonstrates filtering arrays and using ?-notation.
Medical Assessment: Evaluates medical conditions list against condition severity tiers. Shows iterating over lists in decision tables.
Destination Risk: Here we use a Business Knowledge Model (BKM) to encapsulate the logic for determining country risk level based on a predefined mapping. The decision table then looks up the highest risk among all countries on the trip.

Business Knowledge Models are great for reusable logic, complex calculations and integrating with external data.

Putting it Together - The Final Premium

Last decision we will need to do is build the Final Premium:

Combine the outputs of the four sub-decisions
Uses a simple mathematical formula
Demonstrates how modular decisions can be composed

Key Concepts to be Showcased

This example will showcase several key DMN concepts:

Structuring decisions into sub-decisions
Input data mapping
Hit policies (Unique, Collect Max)
Filtering and iterating over lists
Using BKMs for complex logic
Composing decisions together

Working with Complex Data Types

Real-world decisions often require more complex data than a simple flat model with just numbers and strings. DMN allows you to define custom data structures to model your business domain accurately. In this case we’re going to build a DMN model for a travel insurance situation for someone building an itinerary to travel to potentially multiple countries and we want to determine how much it will cost to give that person a travel insurance policy. The factors that will be discussed in the next section focused on Creating Custom Data Types.

Creating the Input Data Structure with Custom Data Types

In our travel insurance example we are going to be looking at building a both a traveler and the trip details as complex data objects:

Traveler:
- age (number)
- claim history (collection of a claim structure)
- medical conditions (string collection)
Trip Details:
- countries (string collection)
- start date (date)
- end date (date)

Mapping out the data model is crucial in DMN, as these become the Input Data nodes that feed into the decision logic. That said, it does not have to be the very first step as you can start mapping out your decision and then do the model. This is the benefit of the capabilities of the Top-Down Design that DMN enables.

Creating the Data Types in Aletyx Playground

Here’s how to create these data structures:

Navigate to Aletyx Playground in your browser
From the landing page, click New Decision to create a new DMN model
You’ll be presented with an empty DMN model editor. This is where we’ll design our decision model
First, change the name of the model from “Untitled” to “travelPremium”
In Aletyx Playground, open the properties panel (press “i” with nothing selected)
Click on “Data Types”
Click “Add” to create a new data type

Creating Traveler in the Data Types

Property	Type	Is Collection
age	number	no
claim history	Claim	yes
medical conditions	string	yes
tDate	date	no

Create a Claim Structure

For the claim structure you need to create 4 different properties as outlined in the table. If you add an Enumeration to the claim history it will help facilitate an easier implementation of the decisions.

Property	Type	Is Collection	Constraints (Enumeration for Allowed Values)
total claim amount	number	no
status	string	no	Approved, Denied, Pending
tDate	date	no

You will notice that Date above is prefixed as tDate, this is not a typo in the documentation, but because Date/date is a reserved word in DMN, you cannot use it as a variable name. For reference, please refer to our reference on DMN

Creating the Trip Data Type

When building the model for the Trip Details, the dates could be used for start and end of the trip and for further enhancement in the decisions. The country list being a collection allows for multiple countries to be added to the data payload so that multiple can be evaluated against.

Property	Type	Is Collection
country	string	yes
start date	date	no
end date	date	no

Using Complex Types in Decision Models

Once defined, you can use these types for Input Data nodes:

Create an Input Data node named “Traveler”
Set its data type to “Traveler”
Create an Input Data node named “Trip Details”
Set its data type to “Trip Details”

Now your decisions can reference properties of these complex types using dot notation:

Traveler.age
Traveler.medical conditions
Trip Details.country

Decision Nodes Logic

Base Premium (Decision Table)

Hit Policy: U (Unique)

Age	Base Premium	Annotation
<25	75	”Younger than 25”
[25..65]	50	”Between 25 and 65”
>65	100	”Older than 65”

Claims Assessment

Hit Policy C> (Collect Max)

Traveler.claim history[status=“Approved”] (claim)	Claims Assessment (number)	Annotations
count(?)=0	0.9	”No claims gets a 10% discount”
count(?) <= 2	1.1	”Claims with value greater than 1000 has 30% premium added”
sum(?.total claim amount)>1000	1.4	”Claims with value greater than 1000 has 30% premium added”
count(?) > 2	1.3	”More than 2 claims have been previously approved”
-	1	”Otherwise condition”

Medical Assessment

Traveler.medical conditions (string)	Medical Condition Assessment (number)	Annotations
some condition in ? satisfies list contains([“heart disease”, “cancer”], condition)	2	”Heart disease or cancer Risk”
some condition in ? satisfies list contains([“diabetes”, “asthma”], condition)	1.5	”Diabetes or Asthma Risk”
some condition in ? satisfies list contains([“high blood pressure”], condition)	1.2	”High Blood Pressure Risk”
-	1	”Otherwise”

Country Risk Level BKM

First, we need to build our BKM. This is done by creating a BKM Function with the type FEEL. The function will be called Country Risk Level of type String and has a parameter country of type string. Then you will create a Decision Table attached to it with the following parameters for it.

country (string)	Country Risk Level (string)	Annotations
”Brazil"	"Medium”	// Medium Risk
”Iraq"	"High”	// High Risk
”Somalia"	"High”	// High Risk
”Afghanistan"	"High”	// High Risk
”Syria"	"High”	// High Risk
”Libya"	"High”	// High Risk
”South Sudan"	"High”	// High Risk
”North Korea"	"High”	// High Risk
”Venezuela"	"High”	// High Risk
”Mexico"	"Medium”	// Medium Risk
”Egypt"	"Medium”	// Medium Risk
”Nigeria"	"Medium”	// Medium Risk
”Pakistan"	"Medium”	// Medium Risk
-	”Low”	// Low Risk

Country Risk Assessment BKM

The way we would approach this in typical approaches would be to do something like the following in pseudocode:

```java
function checkCountryRisk(countries) {

    high risk countries: [
        "Afghanistan", "Syria", "Iraq", "Yemen",
        "Libya", "Somalia", "South Sudan"
    ],

    medium risk countries: [
        "Brazil", "Mexico", "Egypt", "Indonesia",
        "Nigeria", "Venezuela"
    ],

    // Check if any country is high risk
    has high risk: some c in countries
        satisfies list contains(high risk countries, c),

    // Check if any country is medium risk
    has medium risk: some c in countries
        satisfies list contains(medium risk countries, c),

    return:
        if has high risk then "High"
            else if has medium risk then "Medium"
            else "Low"
    }
```

Destination Risk Factor - Building a Decision Using a Context

In FEEL, we can simplify this some with the use of our function we created in the previous section. This will allow us to invoke the function and return the results of the risk factor of a given country. Once this function is created, we need to edit our Decision for the Destination Risk Factor. This will be handled as a Context. When you create the context, you will need to do it in a few steps.

First when editing the Destination Risk Factor, for the Select expression menu, select Context
Edit ContextEntry-1 to being Highest Risk with a type string by clicking the first box.

What each numbered part of the context expression is

Context Variable — In a Context expression you first define named variables usable within the calculation. “Highest Risk” is defined here as a string variable, available to the later parts of the decision. Click this box to open the definition window for that context variable.
Context Variable Definition — What you name in this box defines the context variable that holds the returned value for the rest of this Context decision.
Data Type Dropdown — DMN requires explicit typing of all variables. This dropdown selects from built-in types (string, number, boolean, date) or custom complex types.
Type Management — The Manage button lets you create, edit, or import custom data types for use in your decision model.

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Advanced Modeling

Overview

The Business Problem to be Solved

Walkthrough of the Decision Building

Identify the main decision and sub-factors

Start at the End!

Start Mapping Out Each Decision

Putting it Together - The Final Premium

Key Concepts to be Showcased

Working with Complex Data Types

Creating the Input Data Structure with Custom Data Types

Creating the Data Types in Aletyx Playground

Creating Traveler in the Data Types

Create a Claim Structure

Creating the Trip Data Type

Using Complex Types in Decision Models

Decision Nodes Logic

Base Premium (Decision Table)

Claims Assessment

Medical Assessment

Country Risk Level BKM

Country Risk Assessment BKM

Destination Risk Factor - Building a Decision Using a Context

​Overview

​The Business Problem to be Solved

​Walkthrough of the Decision Building

​Identify the main decision and sub-factors

​Start at the End!

​Start Mapping Out Each Decision

​Putting it Together - The Final Premium

​Key Concepts to be Showcased

​Working with Complex Data Types

​Creating the Input Data Structure with Custom Data Types

​Creating the Data Types in Aletyx Playground

​Creating Traveler in the Data Types

​Create a Claim Structure

​Creating the Trip Data Type

​Using Complex Types in Decision Models

​Decision Nodes Logic

​Base Premium (Decision Table)

​Claims Assessment

​Medical Assessment

​Country Risk Level BKM

​Country Risk Assessment BKM

​Destination Risk Factor - Building a Decision Using a Context

Overview

The Business Problem to be Solved

Walkthrough of the Decision Building

Identify the main decision and sub-factors

Start at the End!

Start Mapping Out Each Decision

Putting it Together - The Final Premium

Key Concepts to be Showcased

Working with Complex Data Types

Creating the Input Data Structure with Custom Data Types

Creating the Data Types in Aletyx Playground

Creating Traveler in the Data Types

Create a Claim Structure

Creating the Trip Data Type

Using Complex Types in Decision Models

Decision Nodes Logic

Base Premium (Decision Table)

Claims Assessment

Medical Assessment

Country Risk Level BKM

Country Risk Assessment BKM

Destination Risk Factor - Building a Decision Using a Context