Techniques enable a user, such as a business analyst or a system
administrator, to define business process rules that control the
processing of transaction data by a computer application. A data
structure is used to store business process rules. The data structure
includes a condition portion and an execution portion of a rule. At
runtime, the computer system executing a computer application determines
whether a condition portion of a rule is met, and in response to a
determination that the condition portion is met, performs an execution
portion of the rule. When an execution portion of the rule is performed,
the computer system generates and stores a protocol entry in a rule
protocol data structure that corresponds to the rule. A protocol entry in
the rule protocol data structure may custom attributes. The protocol
entries in the rule protocol data structure that relate to a particular
data object may be displayed.