Re: [TED] Action-188, ISSUE: production rule systems have "difficulty" with recursive rules in RIF Core

I haven't heard of anyone seriously wanting a RIF SQL dialect.  AFAIK, 
Oracle is interested in something for interchange of business rules, 
both PR and ECA.

Michael Kifer wrote:

>>>This would be a ridiculous and unjustified restriction.
>>>
>>>The core is for exchange. There is no requirement for any concrete
>>>system to properly include the core. (Don't confuse concrete systems with
>>>RIF dialects.)
>>>      
>>>
>>I'm not sure where the disagreement or misunderstanding here is.
>>
>>My understanding fits with what Gary said, that RIF Core is a dialect
>>and it's a part of every RIF dialect, so every rule engine using RIF
>>must implement RIF Core.    
>>    
>>
>
>I think that this requirement makes no sense and, furthermore, is meaningless.
>Suppose people want to exchange aggregate-free subsets of SQL 1992 through RIF.
>Does it mean that RIF core should be limited to relational algebra?
>Or does it mean that we will kick them out even though they can perfectly
>use RIF core to exchange their stuff (preserving semantics etc.) we will
>somehow stop them until they implement full RIF Core?
>
>(Note that different SQL vendors have various deviations from SQL 1992
>(even though most of them claim to support it!), so such an exchange is not
>completely out of question.)
>
>	--michael  
>
>  
>
>>We'll need some normative Conformance text at some point, something a
>>bit like:
>>   http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-test/#consistencyChecker
>>
>>We could say something like (as a rought first cut):
>>
>>     A "RIF Core Rule Engine" is a rule engine which can perform sound
>>     and complete reasoning on any rule set which can encoded in one or
>>     more RIF Core documents.  It must be able to answer all queries
>>     against the deductive closure of the ruleset, where a query is
>>     equivalent to a RIF Core anticedent, and to answer a query means to
>>     provide every matching set of bindings to the variables in the
>>     anticedent. 
>>
>>At the moment, unless some new information comes along, I'm inclined to
>>agree that we need to leave recursive Horn rules out of the core.
>>
>>My understanding is that recursive Horn rules are also a problem for
>>prolog.  As with rete systems, there are lots of clever and effective
>>ways of dealing with this problem (I was once an enthusiastic XSB user),
>>but my sense is that they are still kind of cutting edge instead of the
>>kind of dirt simple we want in RIF Core.  With non-recursive rules, one
>>can do the trivial mapping to prolog or rete rules and any halfway
>>decent engine will be a sound and complete reasoner for RIF Core rules.
>>I think that's what we want.
>>
>>We could go another step back for RIF Core, all the way to datalog, but
>>I think non-recursive terms are still quite useful (eg for defining
>>uncle), so I'd rather not do that.
>>
>>   -- Sandro
>>
>>    
>>
>
>
>  
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Received on Saturday, 16 December 2006 02:48:57 UTC