DMN16 — Support for recursive calls by Business Knowledge Models

The definition of "well formed" for a BusinessKnowledgeModel excludes the notion of the encapulatedLogic of a BusinessKnowledgeModel being able to invoke itself to permit recursion. There is no means to define a 'self' relationship via knowledgeRequirements - the spec forbids it.

However, vendors are currently supporting BusinessKnowledgeModel recursion simply by permitting a BusinessKnowledgeModel's encapulatedLogic to invoke the contained BusinessKnowledgeModel as a function using the contained BusinessKnowledgeModel's name. I propose we formalise this in the spec.

I propose that after the definition of well-formed on page 56/57 (repeated below):

"An instance of BusinessKnowledgeModel is said to be well-formed if and only if, either it does not have any knowledgeRequirement, or all of its knowledgeRequirement elements are well-formed. That condition
entails, in particular, that the requirement subgraph of a BusinessKnowledgeModel element SHALL be acyclic, that is, that a BusinessKnowledgeModel element SHALL not require itself, directly or indirectly. "

The following paragraph is added:

"However, the encapsulatedLogic within a BusinessKnowledgeModel may invoke itself in a recursive manner by using the name of the containing BusinessKnowledgeModel as an invokable name."

Defer to DMN 1.7

Defer to DMN 1.7