A rule identifies a significant condition under which a process or resource becomes problematic or requires attention. You can apply a rule to a process or to a type of data. A rule can be configured to alert users or take programmatic action when the condition occurs. Rules can also be configured to send user alerts when the process or resource returns to compliance.

Each rule contains a logical expression. Optimize enables you to create a simple rule expression to test a single condition, or a complex expression that tests two or more conditions. Optimize evaluates the expression to determine if it is true or false. If an expression evaluates to true, Optimize can be configured to send an e-mail alert and/or invoke a Web service or Event or SNMP action. Optimize identifies rule violations in various My webMethods locations, such as the Problem Report and Analytics Overview pages.

To create a rule, you must do the following:

While you are building the rule expression, Optimize displays the KPI or Event data selections for which you can write rules in My webMethods (Navigate > Applications > Administration > Analytics > Rules).

Note that Optimize enables you to edit active rules, but you must exercise great caution when using this feature. If you change fundamental aspects of a rule, such as the rule type or expression, all historical data (including rule violations) related to that rule are deleted. This functionality can, however, work to your advantage if you need to refine a rule definition to better reflect your business environment, because Optimize enables you to re-generate historical rule violations for updated rule definitions.