1 Overview

The Advanced Model Definition Language (AMDL) is a language for specifying rules and logic within the Fraud Transaction Monitoring System. AMDL is a declarative language for specifying state updates and executions on each event that passes through the system. An example of an event is a customer transaction, such as the withdrawal of money from an ATM. Every event contains a reference (for example, an ID field) to one or more entities of different types, such as a merchant and a consumer. You can use AMDL to create Business Rules where you apply the syntax capable in the modelling language.

1.1 About Business Rules

AMDL expressions are defined against a specific entity type in Business Rules. Business Rules can trigger actions such as alerts and tag outputs when a specific event matches a set of criteria. In addition, Business Rules can trigger actions based on a single event. The rules can also build up behavioural profiles of entities and triggers based on a pattern of behaviour across multiple events, or a single event that differs from the entity's profile.

The following outlines the main features of Business Rules:

  • Definition — You define AMDL expressions for a Business Rule individually, one per tab, within the AMDL Rules and Features Editors in the Thredd Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal.

  • Outputs — You can configure expressions for individual Business Rules to generate or suppress alerts and tags when triggered using annotations (see section Using Annotations). For generating alerts and tags as a result of combinations of triggered rules, you can also incorporate Business Rules into aggregators,

  • Models — You can use model outputs (e.g. risk scores) in Business Rules (see Appendix 3: AMDL Scopes).

  • Grouping — You define Business Rules for an entity type, and apply these to a single type of entity. As optional, you can restrict Business Rules to only execute on one or more event types (see Rules).

  • Execution — Business rules follow a particular pattern when executing. They are:

    • executed in parallel

    • grouped by scope

    • executed in a set sequence. Transient variables are evaluated first, then rules are executed, then state and global updates.

      Note that the exception to the sequence is where one expression explicitly references another, Business Rules expressions may be executed in any order, and in parallel.

  • Scopes — You can use a range of AMDL scopes in Business Rules (for details, see Appendix 3: AMDL Scopes).

  • Annotations — You can use the full range of AMDL annotations in Business Rules (see section AMDL Annotations).

1.1.1 Managing Business Rules

Business Rules can be created, edited and managed in the Analytics section of the Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal. You can edit Business Rules in the Rules page, and feature extraction logic in the Features page.

Approving Business Rules

Changes to Business Rules are made as part of the analytics approval process. Your changes are included in a staging analytics version, and must be submitted for review and approved in your organisation before taking effect. Any changes you make will not take effect until that analytics version is live. See the Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal Guide for more information on using the Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal. These include information on the analytics approval process, including detailed instructions on how to make changes to analytics, and how to use the Business Rules editor in the Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal.

1.2 Guide Examples

This guide uses examples to illustrate the AMDL features in the Fraud Transaction Monitoring Portal. However, not all examples are available in the Live environment. Check the available data fields or speak with your Thredd Account Manager for more information.