DMN12 — Collection Operators

Modeling with collections of items are fundamental to much business processing (as was noted in various LinkedIn threads). Simple comparisons such as ‘does A,B contain A’ should be done in decision tables using dedicated operators and not require exiting to FEEL and structures external to the decision tables. Several tools already support these operators. While you can write these expressions in FEEL it is useful that a table segregates each row as a rule so that one row matches "list contains both a and b", the next row matches "list contains c or e", etc. We find these representations of the logic to be both common and easily understood by business folks. The proposal is to add ‘Is In’, ‘Contains’ and ‘Contains Any’ operators and their negation (symbols can be used instead of the full operator textual name).

Attached images show this feature used in a business setting.

Examples below of how these operators work (1st element is the Input Expression result and the 2nd is an Input Entry):

returns True

Contains Any

returns True

returns True

Is In

returns False

duplicate

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