Dieter --

At 10:12 PM 8/23/2005 +0200, you wrote:
it is not that difficult to identify something around Horn logic
with a minimal model as common ground of state of the art rule languages.

That's similar to how we do things in our online system [1].   I wish it was the case that all significant rule systems could be covered in that way.

But I'm afraid that the various procedural rule languages, in which rule order and other factors determine whether a rule will "fire", are simply not amenable to that kind of treatment.

And such procedural rule languages are widely used and commercially significant.  A W3C recommendation would ignore them at its peril.

So, why not IO-level, message based interoperation of all rule and deductive systems (as in section 2.1 of [2] perhaps) for a first recommendation? 

Something like that should be easy to agree on.  It would get us all interoperating, and form a practical basis for a later recommendation that goes deeper.

                        Cheers,   -- Adrian

[1] Internet Business Logic,  online at www.reengineeringllc.com

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




Adrian Walker
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