James --

At 01:29 PM 8/23/2005 -0400, you wrote:
This makes sense. I have only one question. To what extent to we need to make decisions in this first phase to arrive at a place where we can do this in the second phase. For example, I believe someone brought up the question of whether this should be defined as a FOL. Does this need to be decided in phase 1 or can it safely be deferred until later?

The idea is indeed to defer such questions till Phase 2. 

Hopefully, the Phase1 IO-interoperation proposal in [1]  -- or an RDF or XML version of it -- is something we can all easily agree on. 

It's designed to appeal to OWL folks, commercial rules system vendors, CWM folks, and LP folks.  Indeed, to anyone in the rules space.  No-one has to change their system -- just provide a simple message layer above it.  Et Voila, we all interoperate!

Thus, we quickly get an agreed SW framework in which we can explore the practical issues and build useful applications.  A later Phase2 recommendation could then address the deeper issues of rule- and engine-interchange, based on actual experience of what's important and what is not.

Would Oracle, Fair Isaac, and the other rules vendors and users, including those represented at the Rules Interoperability Workshop, care to comment?  CWM folks?  LP-ers? DERI people? NISTers?

Thanks in advance.

                        -- Adrian



[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/paper/19/


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