"Application Development Without Programmers"

Application Development Without Programmers is rightly rejected by Curt Monashin his blog today. The idea that high performance, integrated, supportable applications can be developed other than by people who know how to do this is a dangerous fallacy. What can, and should be done, is to separate the pieces of an application that require technical maintenance from those that require business maintenance. This allows technical folks to keep the infrastructure running, available, performing etc while allowing those who operate the business to change systems to reflect new business needs. This is what makes business rules technology so interesting, not the belief that it allows development to become programmer-free.

Let developers develop the applications but give them the tools they need to let business owners manage their business - the power to change the way their systems operate from a business perspective. Typically this is worthwhile when you have very large numbers of rules, where those rules change often or where those rules have great business complexity.