External and Internal Rule Objects

CER allows the creation of Rule Objects in these different ways:

• External

  Rule objects created by clients of CER, outside of the context of any calculation. External rule objects tend to represent real-world or agency concepts such as a Person or Case.

• Internal

  Rule objects created by CER rules (or within Java code called out to by CER rules). Internal rule objects tend to be "calculators" or derived data for an interim step in a complex chain of calculations.

The distinction between external and internal rule objects is explained below, and affects:

• whether a rule object can be retrieved using the readall expression; and
• whether a rule object can be stored on the database for retrieval in subsequent transactions.