Visual Flow and Debugging Tool for Jedox Business Rules

Business rules in Jedox are inherently complex to define and even harder to understand, debug and test. It is difficult to trace the exact execution order, sorting/ordering dependencies and the end-to-end calculation flow, and to determine which model elements (and how many) a rule impacts — information that is critical for functional correctness and performance optimization. An interactive visual and testing environment that allows modelers to inspect, simulate and step-through business rules — similar to capabilities available in the Integrator and the Excel “Evaluate Formula” feature would be very helpful.

Possible Functional Requirements that might be helpful (just ideas):

1. Flow Visualization
   • Provide a graphical flowchart-style view that displays business rules as nodes and dependencies as directional edges.
   • Visualize execution order, grouping, and hierarchy; allow expand/collapse of rule groups or namespaces.
   • Highlight live execution paths and conditional branches.

2. Step-through Debugger / Evaluate Mode
   • Allow users to execute rules step-by-step (single-step, step-into, step-over, run-to-end).
   • Display intermediate values for variables, cells and expressions at each step.
   • Show the exact order in which calculations are evaluated.

3. Variable / Scenario Input and Sandbox Execution
   • Enable users to inject arbitrary input values or variable overrides and run simulations in a sandbox

4. Impact Analysis & Counting
   • For a selected rule or node, compute and display which elements (members/cells) are affected and an estimated count of affected elements.
   • Provide a dependency tree upstream and downstream from the selected rule.
   • Provide an estimated performance impact (e.g., estimated execution time or relative cost) using historical run metrics or heuristics.

5. Excel-like Formula Evaluation
   • Provide an “evaluate formula” feature that breaks down complex expressions with multiple conditions into stepwise evaluation, showing intermediate boolean decisions and value transformations.

6. Search, Filter, Sort & Ordering Controls
   • Allow searching for rules by name, dimension, or expression; filter by impacted dimension members; sort rules by declared order, dependency depth, or estimated cost.
   • Allow users to reorder rules in the UI to preview how ordering would change the recalculation chain.

7. Execution Trace, Logging and Export
   • Maintain an execution trace with timestamps, inputs, outputs and intermediate values.
   • Allow exporting traces and impact reports (CSV/JSON/PDF) for offline analysis and performance profiling.

8. Access Control & Audit
   • Enforce role-based access: only authorized users may execute, edit or export rule traces.
   • Log who executed simulations and when (audit trail).