A system and apparatus are disclosed for graphically building business rule conditions. The apparatus of graphically building business rule conditions comprises an expression icon module that displays a menu of function icons for the user, and a business attribute module that displays a menu of business rule attribute icons for the user. A user interface module allows the user to freely drag and drop functions and attributes onto a staging canvas, and relate the functions and attributes to build a graphical depiction of the desired business rule condition. A source code module generates source code directly from the graphical depiction such that the user does not have to understand the specific syntax and nuances of the development environment or runtime environment for the business rule.