Recording of Input Data

Changes to data which may affect case eligibility and entitlement decisions can come in many forms, including:

new evidence records for events that have occurred in the real world;
corrections to data which were recorded incorrectly or declared fraudulently; and
product-wide data common to all cases.

Changes to such data can affect both:

eligibility/entitlement decisions already made; and/or
eligibility/entitlement decisions to be made in the future.

To accommodate both these needs, the Engine knows the types of data required by rules processing, and uses the Dependency Manager to manage changes made to this data through the use of "precedent change sets". When a change is made to data that can affect eligibility/entitlement decisions, an item is added to a precedent change set. The points in the data capture life cycle where this typically occurs are below:

Table 1. When Do Precedent Change Set Items Get Created?
What input data is recorded?	When is an item added to a precedent change set?
Product Delivery Case	When the case is created
Personal details	When the personal details are recorded on the system, but only for types of data configured to be pertinent to eligibility/entitlement calculations (any other details are ignored).
Evidence records for a case	When the evidence is activated, for the types of evidence configured to be pertinent to eligibility/entitlement calculations (NB not when the evidence is first recorded, as only when the evidence is activated is it deemed trustworthy for eligibility/entitlement calculations).
Product-wide configuration information	When an administrator publishes changes to rate tables, rule sets, data configurations, or product configurations, for those items configured to be pertinent to eligibility/entitlement calculations.

For all input data aside from product-wide configuration information, when an item is written to a precedent change set this results in the creation of a deferred process that when executed uses the dependencies stored by the Dependency Manager to determine if any dependents exist for the precedent change set item, and if so re-calculates those dependents. For changes to product-wide configuration information an item is written to a precedent change set that is executed in batch mode.