RIF-PRD and ECA-rules

Dear RIF list members,

I'm interested in the RIF standard and I have a few comments (mostly on the
RIF Production Rule Dialect document). Overall, I like the RIF hierarchy as
a method for exchanging rule-like information between different systems and
it, definitely, looks as a complete and a mature material. I think that a
very strong point for RIF is its condition for safeness of rules, so that
the logical semantics of RIF-BLD and the operational fixed-point semantics
of RIF-PRD coincide.

My first suggestion is to use the RIF-PRD (with its forward chaining
operational semantics) as the base dialect for a reaction rules dialect
which also incorporates events in the style of Event-Condition-Action (ECA)
rules: on <event> if <condition> then <action> (of course, if there is
enough interest from the community for this need). It seems as a logical
extension for the production rules dialect (PR are ECA rules without the
event part). Another special case of this ECA dialect would be triggers
(i.e., ECA rules without the condition part). Moreover, the event part of
this dialect could also address Complex Event Processing (CEP) for rules for
the event composition (which can be also interchanged rules under RIF).

My second comment/question is about equality. The core dialect only allows
equality in rule premises which is puzzling to me because I don't see how is
then used (how terms are 'defined' as equal).

Regards,
Paul Fodor.