Re: RIF vs Rule Language

On Dec 9, 2005, at 8:18 AM, Hassan Aït-Kaci wrote:
> Jim Hendler wrote:
>
>> well, that's true - but let's not forget there are a number of 
>> different kinds of semantics - I don't know of any programming 
>> language in major use that has anything other than operational 
>> semantics, and they seem to work pretty good (at least this email 
>> seems to be getting to you through a whole bunch of computers and 
>> routers and programs, and I suspect few if any have a model theory) 
>> --
>
> My point precisely.
>
>>   this is not to advocate not doing a formal semantics, but just to 
>> remind people that an option is to do basically an operational 
>> semantics
>
> But who said that an operational semantics may not be _formal_ ?
[snip]

There a CR spec describing a formal operational semantics for XQuery:
	http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/CR-xquery-semantics-20051103/

> Formal
> semantics of computational systems is, by far, not equivalent to a 
> _model_
> semantics.
[snip]

I don't know what you mean. Programming language theorists use 
denotational semantics as well, and they have advantages and 
disadvantages over (big step or little step) operational semantics.

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Friday, 9 December 2005 17:30:06 UTC