Re: how to observe RIF BLD consumer conformance?

On Fri, 2010-04-16 at 10:03 -0400, Chris Welty wrote:
> 
> Dan Connolly wrote:
> > On Mon, 2010-03-01 at 12:01 -0500, Chris Welty wrote:
> >> Dan,
> >>
> >> We struggled with this point based on RIF's status as an interchange format, not a rule language per se.  Thus the conformance refers to the ability to translate in a way that does not change the semantics, which includes entailments.
> >>
> >> It is not, as you say, directly observable in a positive way, however it is negatively observable
> >>  through sets of tests, ie you can test if it did not happen. 
> > 
> > I don't see how you could test that it did not happen either.
> > 
> > Do any of the existing RIF test cases show how it can be done?
> 
> Where I'm assuming the "it" here refers to the property of being conformant.

Or rather: not conformant. (you can only falsify a hypothesis
by experiment, not prove it).

> In general, a RIF processor takes statements in RIF syntax and translates them into some
> existing rule language. This is described in each of the documents. If you translate a
> positive test case and its conclusion into the target rule language, the conclusion
> should hold.  If you translate a negative test case into the rule language then
> the conclusion should not hold.

OK, so any of the semantics tests may show that a piece of
software fails to be a conforming RIF BLD consumer. 

I guess that makes sense. Thanks.


> 
> -Chris
> 
> > 
> >> -Chris
> >>
> >>
> >> Dan Connolly wrote:
> >>> I see:
> >>>
> >>> "A RIF processor is a conformant BLDΤ,Ε consumer iff it implements a
> >>> semantics-preserving mapping, μ, from the set of all BLDΤ,Ε formulas to
> >>> the language L of the processor (μ does not need to be an "onto"
> >>> mapping)."
> >>>  -- http://www.w3.org/TR/rif-bld/#Conformance_Clauses
> >>>
> >>> I don't see how this property is observable/testable; i.e. why
> >>> this product class is defined at all.
> >>>
> >>> A conformant RIF-BLD consumer isn't required to compute entailment?
> >>>
> >>> This much is observable: "A conformant RIF-BLD consumer must reject all
> >>> inputs that do not match the syntax of BLD." But that's just syntax
> >>> checking.
> >>>
> >>> editorial: why "conformant" rather than "conforming"?
> >>>
> >>>
> > 
> > 
> 


-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
gpg D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Saturday, 17 April 2010 20:53:24 UTC