Re: OWL-S: Handling Failures, and automatic generation of composite process IOPRs [was: Re: A bunch of OWL-S difficulties]

On Sep 7, 2004, at 3:58 PM, Drew McDermott wrote:
[snip]
>>>> *composite*
>>>>      processes can, in principle, be automatically generated by 
>>>> tools.
>>>>      Since such tools don't yet exist, they have been manually 
>>>> generated
>>>>      for this example.
>>>>
>>>> How would such automatic generation happen?
>
> It wouldn't.  That comment should be deleted.

Many of us have been long skeptical about such claims.

> As we discussed in today's telecon, it's probably not feasible to
> infer the outputs or effects of a composite process.  A simple case is
> where a step generates two outputs, only one of which is a useful
> output of the process the step belongs to.  But the real problem is
> that it's undecidable what effects or values a composite process is
> going to have, unless some strong limits are put on recursion of
> 'perform's of other processes.  I don't know if the topic of limiting
> recursion in Owl-S has ever come up.

Yes, in principle, at least. I think. I remember a Sheila slide, but I 
don't see any discussion of k-loops in "Simulation, Verification and 
Automated Composition of Web Services":
	http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/narayanan02simulation.html

Hmm. I poked around (e.g., Rich Hull's stuff) but couldn't find the 
smoking slide or paper.

[snip]
> Adopting a "shorthand" convention in XML/RDF is like putting a smaller
> hood ornament on your SUV to reduce gasoline consumption.
[snip]

I'm laughing.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.

Received on Tuesday, 7 September 2004 20:17:52 UTC