Corticon Studio helps improve performance by removing redundancies within Rulesheets. There are two types of redundancies the Compress Tool detects and removes:

  1. Rule or subrule duplication. The Compress Tool searches a Rulesheet for duplicate columns (including subrules that may not be visible unless the rule columns are expanded), and deletes extra copies. Picking up where we left off in New Rule Added by Completeness Check, let's add another rule (column #4), as shown in the following figure:
    Figure 1. New Rule (#4) added

    While these four rules use only two Conditions and take just two Actions (an assignment to riskRating and a posted message), they already contain a redundancy problem. Using the Expand Tool , this redundancy is visible in the following figure:

    Figure 2. Redundancy problem exposed
    Clicking the Compress Tool has the effect shown in the following figure:
    Figure 3. Rulesheet after compression

    Looking at the compressed Rulesheet in this figure, notice that column #4 disappeared. More accurately, the Compress Tool determined that column 4 was a duplicate of one of the subrules in column 1 (1.2) and removed it. 

    Compression does not, however, alter the text of the rule statement; that task is left to the rule writer.

    It is important to note that the compression does not alter the Rulesheet's logic; it simply affects the way the rules appear in the Rulesheet: the number of columns, Values sets in the columns, and such. Compression also streamlines rule execution by ensuring that no rules are processed more than necessary.

  2. Combining Values sets to simplify and shorten Rulesheets. In the Shipping charge example, the Compress Tool combined Rulesheet columns wherever possible by creating Values sets in Condition cells. For example, rule 6 in the figure Compressed Shipping Charge Rulesheetis the combination of rule 6 and 8 from Rulesheet with Renumbered Rules.
    Figure 4. Compressed shipping charge Rulesheet

    Value sets in Condition cells are equivalent to the logical operator OR. Rule 6 therefore reads:

    In deployment, the decision service will execute this new rule 6 faster than the previous rule 6 and 8 together.