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TIBCO BusinessEvents® Enterprise Edition 6.3.1

# Concepts

Concept types are descriptive entities similar to the object-oriented concept of a class.

Concept types describe a set of properties, such as one concept might be Department and include department name, manager, and employee properties.

You can add concept definitions so that information that arrives in events or from other sources can be organized and persisted as needed, and used in rules. You can add definitions manually. You can also import database tables as concept definitions. Concept instances are created in rules.

Rules at runtime can create instances of concepts. For example, when a simple event arrives, a rule can create an instance of a concept using values present in the event. Rules can also modify existing concept instance property values.

Concepts must be explicitly deleted from working memory when no longer needed or they will steadily increase memory usage. Use the function `Instance.deleteInstance()` to delete concept instances.

Depending on other factors, adding, modifying, and deleting concept instances can cause TIBCO BusinessEvents to evaluate or re-evaluate dependent rules, as explained in Conflict Resolution and Run to Completion Cycles.

Note: Concepts are automatically asserted into the Rete network when created, except in the following cases:

- Database concepts returned by database query operations.
- Concepts passed to a rule function in the context of ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks integration projects.

Each concept property includes a history, the size of which is configurable. The history size determines how many previous values TIBCO BusinessEvents stores for that property. See Concept Property History.

Note: Database concept properties do not support history tracking.

## Concept Relationships

Concepts can have inheritance, containment and reference relationships with other concepts. See Inheritance Relationships.

## Exporting Concepts to XSD Files

You can export concept and event types to XML Schema Definition (XSD) files. XML schemas are used for interoperability between TIBCO BusinessEvents and third-party tools or SOA platforms that use well-defined XML for message communication, transformation, and validation.

## Concept Serialization and Handling of Null Value Properties at Runtime

By default, when concept instance objects are serialized to XML, properties with null values are excluded. You can change this behavior so that null values are included. You can also change the XSD for a concept object to allow null values, using the nullable attribute.

## Concepts and State Machines

You can also associate a concept with a state machine. See TIBCO BusinessEvents Data Modeling Developer Guide for details.

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TIBCO BusinessEvents® Enterprise Edition

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