The phrase "business rules" comes up often in Enterprise-level software solutions—whether you are working with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), or a variety of other systems—there will generally always be a business rules module. The reason is that a business rules feature or module allows the implementation of custom logic within a platform or off-the-shelf product that gives organizations the ability to tailor the product to their exact needs.

Master Data Services is no different to the aforementioned technologies—it contains the ability to create business rules via the Master Data Manager front-end, which upon the occurrence of certain events, are then executed in the MDS business rules engine.

The business rules that you create in MDS take the form IF condition THEN action. It is possible to choose from a number of different conditions, each of which can perform different logical...