SBVR overlaps but is neither a subset nor a superset of business rulesin the typical acceptance of the notion, as implemented by the big guns: Ilog, FairIsaac, Pega. It’s a standard effort, and by nature of these standard efforts, something for everybody.
We can spend a lot of time arguing who is right and who is not, but the reality is that we are dealing with a space which is tough to define because it covers logic, which in itself is more fluid than data. A very expansive definition of business rules will cover all constraints that you define in databases, but that is not a practical definition for the industry.

I agree with the panelists that, in practical terms, and standard efforts aside, the reality is that decision management is a superset of business rules management – to the extent that business rules management is just one of the aspects of decision management.

There was no more hand waving in that panel than when you ask any panel of BPM vendors to define where BPM starts and where it stops. I have been there, and seen it, and it still happens. Each and every vendor will define its boundaries where their products start and stop.
Now, if we want to talk CEP… it ain’t gona get any nicer

I’d like to respectfully disagree with the panelists on this one, but of course their definitions of DM and BRM probably differ from mine.

For sure the domains of decisions and rules overlap (e.g. a BRMS manages an operational rule that makes a decision in a BPM system), but I’m pretty sure no-one would claim that, for example, an SBVR policy-type rule *is* a decision. Or an SBVR-type rule that defines the relationship between business terms.

Cheers