Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Business logic

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Kusma (討論) 10:31, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Business logic

This article just doesn't make any sense. it is too Dilbert-zone like for me. Needs either to be made into an article that cross-references other concepts, or else should be removed. As it is, it isn't in the least enlightening. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 15:25, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Update -- Since posting the deletion notice on the page, the article has been dramatically changed, and I'd say improved. I'd recommend anyone who voted here to go back and take a second look. Neale Monks 22:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

• Delete per WP:V and WP:OR. Possibly a neologism as well. Scorpiondollprincess 16:04, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Super strong keep, due diligence with Google, book stores, etc. will show that this is a widespread IT term. Gazpacho 19:55, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

  Specifically [1], [2], [3], [4], and especially [5]. Explicit definition here. Gazpacho 18:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  Regarding the neologism claim, see [6] (1998), [7] (1997), and [8] (1994). Before that, of course, there's no web to search. Widespread use in the academic literature shows that it is not merely a pointy-hair buzzword. Gazpacho 00:09, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid that these references merely reenforce my skepticism.--Fergie 10:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete. Qualifies as WP:NONSENSE, unless (most of) the other words in the article are redefined. The sentences make sense, but the concepts aren't. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 23:07, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
• Delete as complete bollocks, among other things...although if there is an umbrella term for all the different "forms of logic" (business, functional, presentation etc.) mentioned in the article, then a new article about that, with sections devoted to each "type" might be appropriate, if this really is a term used in IT. Byrgenwulf 07:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  The closest term I can think of is multitier architecture (which links to this article), but if you've decided that this article is bollocks I'm not really sure what you're looking for. Let's keep this text. Gazpacho 18:55, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep just because I'm an inclusionist. Nixdorf 13:08, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete, per WP:NEO it's not really a "widespread" IT term (to be fair I've heard it used, but mostly by PM and business owners... the same people who were using "paradigm" and "outside the box" every 5 minutes a few years back)& any site that "defines" it states something along the lines of "Business logic is an often overused term that can be used to describe many things and the definitions are typically very verbose". It's a term, loosely used, for a wide range of different business processes... and this article just describes one variant definition for Business Logic. I was debating a bit between delete/keep on the basis that editing could clean this up, but since the industry cannot agree upon what the term actually means, I don't think it is possible to actually write a WP:V article on the subject...--Isotope23 19:42, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  You do not have to stop reading after one sentence. Can you show examples of definitions that fundamentally disagree? Gazpacho 19:47, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

  WP:AGF there, killer... I read the whole article. The links you provided are all using "business logic" to talk about completely different processes and procedures... I'll post up a few more when I get some time. My point stands... though I think the principle contributor to this article did a commendable job, I don't think it is possible to write a WP:V article on the topic that adequately describes it when the term itself is not properly defined by the industry that uses it (though I will say that Uncle G gets a big star for trying).--Isotope23 20:19, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Delete Term is not yet adequately defined by the industry to merit an encyclopedia article. Too many of the references described the term as needing definition. This makes this a neologism in the process of forming. Per WP:NEO, we need treatments in secondary sources to have a Wikipedia article. We aren't there yet; the online Tech Encyclopedia link comes close, but to my eyes doesn't pass muster. Disclosure to my shock and surprise, my job is actually relevant to the discussion of this article. We don't highlight this term in our marketing materials (using "business rules" instead because we have a patent related to that), but at least one of our competitors is being puffed by one of the links in the article, and I feel the closing admin ought to know this. GRBerry 00:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

• Comment, you've summed up my problem with this article nicely GRBerry. I just don't see how we can have a valid article about the topic when it is a WP:NEO that is still being defined by the industry. To me at least it is similar to if someone had tried to create a RAD article prior to 1991, when the process was formally defined. --Isotope23 16:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: As full disclosure, it happens that the term "business logic" figures prominently in the very project that I'm working now, and its use is fully consistent with this article (it's the part of the code that deals with how we make money). So if it's patent nonsense and complete bollocks then that implies I am wasting my time. That's why I have been prickly with regard to the nomination and why I hope the closing admin will click through the links I added above. Gazpacho 00:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep.: I will fix it up if given some time. I just came to this page a few minutes ago by doing a query (i.e., I was looking for it specifically). Please don't delete. --nathanbeach 07:03, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep. If this is WP:NONSENSE then so are most of the Wikipedia articles on ideas in social science, pop music, works of art, psychological theories, religions, and political philosophies, among many other areas. The business rules page actually has a good definition of business logic: "Software packages automate Business rules using Business logic." Are you proposing that we delete the business rules article too? It's also clear from the business logic article that business logic models some of the behavior of traditional business processes such as "accounts, loans, itineraries, etc." What is nonsensical about that? I do think the introductory comments equating business logic to other kinds of functional logic are misleading, though. I suggest rewriting the top section, and I'd suggest adding links to the corresponding articles on those particular business processes (accounting, etc.), for those of you who don't understand what these business processes are about. Understanding the business process being modelled is crucial to understanding the business logic. BTW, you only need to thumb through a computer book section to see dozens of examples of business logic, so one can hardly argue that it's a new and untried idea. The proponents have also uncovered a large number of references. The term (as with its companion term, business rules, which is less well defined than business logic but is not being challenged) in wide use. I get nearly 9 million hits on Google! There are obviously vast numbers of people who think the phrase is very important, even if some people around here happen to be put off by it. Even if it had no semantic meaning whatsoever it would still warrant an article as an important social phenomenon. Indeed the topic is quite a bit more important than the topic of the average Wikipedia article. If you still think the idea is vague, feel free to add a "criticism" section and say so, assuming you have appropriate sources for such a claim. Donagle 09:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment. The onus of proof is not an proving vagueness, but on proving meaning. You seem to be talking around the subject of a definition rather that attempting to actually define 'Business Logic'. Could you briefly describe what you believe the term means?--Fergie 10:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

    What part of the definition in the introduction is unclear? Do you understand that business automation software has to manipulate data that relate to the money-making activity of that business? that manipulation can be directed from various user interfaces? that it is good engineering to separate the manipulation from the interfaces for that reason? I want to make the article clearer, but people blithely dismissing this extensively documented term as "dilbert-esque" (whatever that means) doesn't help. Dilbert may portray people who deal with business organization as idiots, but that doesn't make it true, and in any case the term is used by the developers as well. Gazpacho 17:28, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

    • Comment Dilbert-esque refers to writing that sounds impressive but actually means nothing, and is used (in the archetype at least) by IT consultants to bamboozle tech-illiterate business owners. My comments referred specifically to this version [9], which opened with this gem: Business logic is business logspecific capabilities or processing which that software system embodies. None of that was explained or cross-linked to anything else. If that means anything at all, it doesn't to me, and I'd consider myself at least as smart and well read as the average Wikipedia reader. To be fair, the article has been explanded and improved since. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 18:54, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
    • I understood what you meant, Neale; I don't understand why Fergie believes that characterization applies to the revised article. Gazpacho
      • Cool. Let's be clear: the ideal situation is a better article, not no article. As it stood, it was a bad article. The threat of deletion has spurred appropriate editors into action. That's how the system should work, so I'm pleased. My only concern now is that the article should probably reflect that the term has multiple meanings, and though widely used, can mean different things in different industries and/or in different situations. Perhaps it should even be said that some people consider the term vague and meaningless. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 20:57, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
• Delete Keep. Business Logic is a term with no meaning. Although purported to be software terminology, it does not represent a concrete concept of system engineering or database theory. Arguably Business Logic is noteable precisely because it is in (occasional) use yet represents no defined concept (that is to say it is dilbert-esque). I have observed that most attempts to retrospectively assign a concept to Business Logic tend to gravitate towards describing an abstraction layer, yet do not specify a meaningful difference between the two. Other efforts to give meaning to 'business logic' are clearly far too vague or merely WP:NONSENSE--Fergie 10:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep. I don't see any reason to get rid of this article now that it's been rewritten. I hear the term used in serious software engineering contexts all the time, and in the documentation/interface of development tools (for instance, is you use XDoclet to generate an message-driven EJB, it places a todo comment stub saying "do business logic here" in the onMessage method). Even if the above user's disdain for the term is founded (er, tl;dr), it doesn't mean the term doesn't merit an article. If he wants to cite sources calling the term out as fluff, then it can be added to the article to educate people; removing the article would just make people more ignorant... -VJ 20:18, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
• Keep: Business logic is a critical element of automation of business processes with software. This article could use improvement, but there really should be such an article here. -- M0llusk 06:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps too little emphasis has been put on concrete examples? One of the most prominent is calculation of taxation. Performing a sale in many cases requires a complex calculation of taxes owed to a number of parties. Not correctly performing this calculation may result in transactions that are illegal. The logic used to calculate sales taxes is not directly related to the amount of the sale or any method used to store information about the sale. A detailed description of the business process of sales tax calculation encapsulates the business logic of the transaction. The business process goes into further detail about what laws apply and what tax goes where and when, but the business logic for sales tax calculation is apart from the process for sales tax payment. That is what makes the business logic so valuable. All it does is specify how required rules are calculated. This may involve a complex formula including the location, time, agents, and content of the transaction. Before business logic became commonly used software for business transactions was monolithic such that any change to the business process or the the software such as the database that stored transaction amounts required the business logic to be rewritten at great cost. -- M0llusk 18:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

• Keep: There really should be an article about this term in an encyclopedia, since it is used quite often in software engineering. This term might be difficult to describe but this article makes a good job. And maybe it will be improved. There is no need to delete an article because someone does not like the term that is decribed by the article. -- jvd 15:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Keep: Maybe it was useful as a threat to goad people into improving a poorly written article, but I find the continued proposals to delete this article very disturbing. Are we supposed to be like the rewriters of history in Orwell's 1984 and pretend the idea of business logic does not exist? Wikipedia is full of articles on ideas that are utter nonsense, quite contradictory, evil, or so hopelessly vague that they couldn't possibly be properly described. That's because human society is full of such ideas. Many such ideas are important to many people. Where these ideas are important, they deserve a Wikipedia article. They also deserve to be criticized. Too many articles on Wikipedia seem to be written by fans of the bad idea described and give short shrift to criticism. The proper response is to insist that cited criticism be included in the article, often prominently, and to insist that all important definitions of an idea, not just the definition preferred by most fans of the idea, should be discussed.CatNoir 16:51, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

On the basis of this well argued contribution I am changing my 'delete' to a 'keep'--Fergie 09:20, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.