Re: [RIF] [UCR]: What is the RIF (revisited) --> changing vendor rule languages

Michael Kifer wrote:
> "Vincent, Paul D" <PaulVincent@fairisaac.com> wrote:
>>
>> Michael Kifer Wrote:
>>
>>> "Vincent, Paul D" <PaulVincent@fairisaac.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> There are certainly similarities between the rules market today and 
the
>>>> SQL market of the early 80s. This is why the vendors are supporting 
the
>>>> OMG PRR and RIF efforts. However, so far there is zero push for
>>>> additional rule construct support in the rule languages. 
>>> 
>>> Perhaps those customers don't know better?
>> 
>> Possibly, but more likely their needs are simple enough to be addressed
>> by the main commercial vendors.
>> 
>>> But ask companies like Ontoprise, OntologyWorks, XSB Inc., etc., to 
get a
>>> different view.
>> 
>> Well, these are a different class of rules platform (ontology-based
>> rules). A perfectly valid class, but one that seems to have a much
>> smaller market share today.
>
> In 1982, SQL market was infinitesimally small compared to other DB
> products.  And those competitors were arguing that the needs of their
> customers are perfectly met by hierarchical DB products. They also used 
to
> claim that relational DBs will never fly because they are 
unimplementable,
> non-scalable, cause leprosy and impotence. Are we hearing the same 
arguments
> again? ;-)
>
>
>>>>> Perhaps the reason why the rules
>>>>> market is fairly small is because the current commercial rule 
languages 
>>>>> are so pathetically poor and ill-founded.
>>>> 
>>>> If this is the case I have not seen any evidence to support it, and 
would
>>>> welcome any links to support this hypothesis!
>>> 
>>> I dunno about the links. But I can tell you about my own limited 
experience
>>> consulting for companies. (Consulting is not what I do regularly or
>>> eagerly, hence the disclaimer.) Twice my clients needed a rule 
language and
>>> twice we considered various commercial products, including some from
>>> companies represented in RIF. And twice we decided to use something 
else,
>>> non-commercial and open source. The commercial offerings just didn't 
cut it.
>> 
>> I can quite believe it if the need was to reason over an ontology.
>> 
>
> No, not ontology reasoning. A fairly simple reasoning, which could be 
done
> easily with simple Prolog, but was hard to control with forward-chaining
> production rules.
>
>> I will offer you a beer at the next F2F to discuss further!
>
> Wine. I'll take that beer next time, when the F2F will be in Belgium :-)

:-) ah-ha good idea and we have indeed very good beer here :-)


[a bit aside this discussion]
What about rules to serve the purpose of building
proofs so that my engine can explain what it did?


-- 
Jos De Roo, AGFA http://www.agfa.com/w3c/jdroo/

Received on Thursday, 9 February 2006 20:23:56 UTC