Business rule extraction
Get the business rules out of the COBOL.
Plain-English rules for every unit of code, linked to the lines that implement them and confirmed by the people who know the business.
Senior bonus rate
Savings customers aged 65 or over earn a 0.25% bonus on top of their tier rate.
IF LK-ACCT-AGE >= WS-SENIOR-AGE
ADD WS-SENIOR-BONUS TO WS-APPLIED-RATE- Source
- lines 101–103
- Owner
- Retail Finance
- Status
- confirmed
In short
- Business rule extraction recovers the policies a legacy system enforces (fees, interest, eligibility, limits) from its source code.
- Montora drafts a plain-English rule for each unit of COBOL, links it to the code it came from and records who owns it.
- Your experts confirm or correct each rule, and confirmed rules guide the migration and its tests.
What business rule extraction is
In most mainframe estates the only complete description of the business is the code. Business rule extraction turns that code back into statements a person can check: 'customers aged 65 or over earn a bonus rate on savings', not 'ADD WS-SENIOR-BONUS TO WS-APPLIED-RATE'.
Why it is hard in COBOL
A single rule is often spread across a condition in one paragraph, an action in another and a constant in a copybook. Comments drift out of date, dead code survives for decades, and defaults look like decisions.
That is why generated summaries alone are not enough. A rule has to be traced to the code and confirmed by someone who knows the business.
05 WS-SENIOR-AGE PIC 9(3) VALUE 65.
05 WS-SENIOR-BONUS PIC V9(5) VALUE 0.00250.
...
IF LK-ACCT-AGE >= WS-SENIOR-AGE
ADD WS-SENIOR-BONUS TO WS-APPLIED-RATE
END-IFHow Montora extracts rules
For every unit of code, Montora drafts the rule it enforces in plain English, links it to the source and records an owner. Your experts confirm, correct or reject each draft, and confirmed rules feed the migration and the tests that check it.
- A plain-English rule drafted for every unit
- Linked to the code it came from
- Ownership recorded, so the right expert reviews it
- Confirmed by people, not assumed by a model
- Used to guide migration and testing
Rules your auditors can follow
A confirmed rule with a link to its code and a named reviewer is documentation a regulator can read. It also outlives the migration: the next team inherits the rules, not just the code. When behaviour matters most, replay testing checks the rule survived.
Questions
What is business rule extraction?
- Business rule extraction is the process of recovering the business policies a legacy system enforces, such as fees, interest rates and eligibility checks, from its source code into statements people can review.
Can AI extract business rules from COBOL?
- AI can draft rules quickly, but drafts can be wrong or miss logic spread across the program. Montora treats every AI-drafted rule as a draft linked to its source code, and a person confirms it before it is relied on.
Why extract business rules before a migration?
- Because the rules are what the migration must preserve. Confirmed rules tell reviewers what the new code has to do and tell testers what to check.
Sources
Related
Bring one system. We'll show you the proof.
Montora is taking on a small number of design partners: banks, insurers and other teams with COBOL they can't afford to get wrong.