Velocity Rule Performance Check

Velocity rule performance checks proactively identify performance issues in rules that contain velocity conditions, preventing misconfigured or resource-intensive rules from reaching your production environment.

Velocity rules can significantly impact system performance if not properly optimized. Rule performance check ensures that only rules meeting performance standards are deployed.

Note: rule performance check does not trigger for compare and datamatch rules.

Rule performance checks rule execution time against a configurable evaluation threshold (in milliseconds). If a rule exceeds this limit, the check will fail. You can configure the evaluation threshold under Settings » Configuration » Rule performance check.

The default value is 0, meaning that the check will run against the hard coded SEON upper threshold of 20 seconds. If your response time budget requires a lower threshold for velocity rules, you can set the threshold anywhere between 300 and 20,000 ms.

Rule performance check is automatically triggered when:

• You turn on a rule with velocity conditions
• You edit and save changes to an existing and active rule containing velocity conditions

Note: If you modify and save a rule while it is turned off, the performance check process will not start.

Rule performance check happens in two phases:

Pre-validation

During rule creation, SEON performs a quick static evaluation of velocity conditions directly on the Rule Details page as soon as you add them.

SEON checks the rule conditions for obvious performance risks and flags potential issues immediately. If something looks problematic, you’ll see warning messages directly on the UI so you can adjust the rule before saving.

Rule performance check 

After you save the rule, SEON automatically starts the rule performance check process in the background. During this phase, SEON simulates how the rule would perform on a set of historical transactions and evaluates it against the configured evaluation threshold.

You will receive a notification (in-app and/or email, depending on how you set your notifications up) once the check is completed. If performance issues are detected, you can review and adjust the rule if needed.

Until a new rule or the update of an existing rule passes the performance check, the changes will not be rolled out to your production environment. In case of an existing rule, its previous version will keep running without any changes applied to it. Once a rule with velocity conditions passes the check, it will go live either as a new rule, or as an updated rule.

1. Head to the Scoring Engine page in SEON.
2. Open the Custom rules tab.
3. Click New rule.
4. Use the AI rule builder to create a rule or click Add condition and enter a velocity condition manually. The static analysis will validate the condition and display any issues as a warning message. 
5. Turn on the rule.
6. Click Save. SEON will now start the rule performance check process in the background.
7. Once the process is done, you will receive a notification.

Click the notification message to review the rule validation results.

• PASSED: Rule passed performance check and meets evaluation thresholds.
• IN PROGRESS: Rule is currently undergoing a performance check.
• FAILED: Rule failed performance check and exceeds evaluation thresholds.
• FAILED CHANGE: Rule update failed performance check; original version remains active.

Note: When a rule is turned off and has not been checked yet, the Perf Check column remains empty.

The Custom rules tab contains two new columns:

• P95 Runtime
• P99 Runtime

These values indicate the runtime of each rule’s performance.

• Until enough historical data is available to assess this for the rule, the columns’ value will display INSTANT.
• For rules that do not contain a velocity condition, the values will display INSTANT.
• To view these columns, click the View settings button at the top right of the Custom rules view page and add them to the view.

Settings

• The P95 & P99 columns will display their values in red, if the rule evaluation threshold is lower than the Pxx value.
• This setting can be defined under Settings » Configuration.