  Business specifications are essential to describe and understand businesses
(and, in particular, business rules) independently of any computing systems
used for their possible automation. They have to express this understanding in
a clear, precise, and explicit way, in order to act as a common ground between
business domain experts and software developers. They also provide the basis
for reuse of concepts and constructs ("patterns") common to all - from finance
to telecommunications -, or a large number of, businesses, and in doing so save
intellectual effort, time and money. Moreover, these patterns substantially
ease the elicitation and validation of business specifications during
walkthroughs with business customers, and support separation of concerns using
viewpoints.
