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Thus far, rule types have been considered in the context of data entry on the Invest-
ment screen of the sample application. Batch processes are different from screen data
entry. They are business process steps where the system updates records in a database,
rather than having users do so directly. Users may enter some information on one or
more screens that initiate the batch process, but the users are not updating the data-
base a record at a time as they are in screen data entry. An application utilizes these
user inputs in order to control the batch process, and perhaps also as default values
for some update operations. Batch processes, therefore, rely greatly on business rules.
They are generally more complex than business processes associated ...