Re: Production Logic Programs Approach, in a Nutshell: paper now available

From: Benjamin Grosof <bgrosof@MIT.EDU>
Subject: Re: Production Logic Programs Approach, in a Nutshell: paper now available 
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:45:51 -0500

> Hi Peter,
> 
> At 10:11 AM 12/20/2005, you wrote:
> >This bring to mind an interesting issue.
> >
> >Should the RIF WG be investigating systems or formalisms that do not have
> >complete publically-available comprehensible formal definitions?
> >
> >My vote would be "NO".
> 
> Noted :-) .  Do Production Rules (cf. Ilog, Fair Isaac, Jess, etc.), 
> or ECA Rules, qualify?  ;-)

It depends.  Certainly at least one of the various definitions of OPS that I
can recall counts, as a procedural definition.  Newer production rule
formalisms could count, in the same, less-than-ideal way.  However appeals to
code are worthless, in my opinion, and appeals to user documentation are almost
always worthless, because user documents doesn't generally have sufficient
formality.

> Production LP is an expressively fairly simple reformulation of 
> several pieces of previous work by me and others
> (Situated + various other expressive features, cf. RuleML/SWSL) that 
> translates (bidirectionally) a bit more simply to Production Rules 
> (PR) than the previous Situated extension does.

I certainly didn't get that from your paper.  I had a bunch of questions that
weren't answered in the document, among them was whether actions had to be
idempotent.  The appeal to sensor KBs seems to be fatally flawed in the
presence of binding patterns, as well.

By the way, a direct pointer would have been much better.

> I'll be packaging all the formal details about the formalism and the 
> translation to PR, in a self-contained relatively-concise way in the 
> next major iteration of the writeup (which I aim to have in the next 
> few weeks).  

Hmm, an announcement couldn't have waited until then?

> I'll look forward to feedback then about comprehensibility :-) .

> Best,
> Benjamin

peter

Received on Tuesday, 20 December 2005 20:57:39 UTC