RE: [UCR] Design constraints: early example goal/csf hierarchy --> PR / PRR

Added comments below (hope my notes are not boring anyone)...

 

Paul Vincent

-----Original Message-----
From: Bijan Parsia [mailto:bparsia@isr.umd.edu] 
On Apr 25, 2006, at 4:00 AM, Vincent, Paul D wrote:

 

...

[snip]

> AFAIK there is no "chaos" in the rule market place, and the rule

> transformations I am aware of (of course, in my case, chiefly from 

> other

> vendors to Blaze's syntax) have not been overly problematic, being 

> 1-off

> vendor switching:

 

This all suggests to me that the PR situation is much simpler than I 

feared, which would be a good thing. One thing that would help move 

things along (in my opinion) is a concrete proposal from some rule 

vendor of what they want/need (in terms of features, etc.). A straw 

proposal, perhaps with syntax. Could be a pointer to something with a 

"and it also needs blah blah and blah". Then that would be something to 

build on/formalize/discuss.

I'd expect the PRR spec to provide this input. We'll be updating this
soon and will be made available to the RIF group.

 

> - some could be done via XSLT conversions from other XML 

> representations

> of rules

 

So RIF would largely obviate that since the engines/tools would 

export/import RIF directly? 

Ideally, yes.

Or was the XSLT generic? I don't see why 

XSLT wouldn't be a reasonable implementation strategy, I guess.

Probably, it would be. 

 

 

> - some would have been rearchitected to suit a fwd chaining PR 

> mechanism

> over a bwd chaining PR mechanism

 

Do you think RIF could make this easier? How?

No. This is a complex problem, and although RIF will provide an
interchange format, it still assumes smarts for interchange between rule
types, even if this is semantically a reasonable thing to do.

 

[snip]

...

 

>  and precious few other rule types have enough

> users to justify providing a standard API (I'd be interested in
counter

> examples though).

> - OMG stuff: well PRR is taking the subset approach, and SBVR deals 

> with

> business rule statements not rules in an executable context.

> - RuleML: see PROLOG, not really anything to do with PR except there
is

> the PRR RuleML variant under development, and also mostly a family of

> related schemas for different rule representations (AFAIK not dealing

> with interchange between rule types, although clearly the common
schema

> basis would help in the mechanics of interchange)

 

By "interchange between rule types" you mean converting one type of 

rule to another, or integrating rule sets with different types of 

rules?

AFAIK RuleML itself does not address rule language interchange. I'd
bounce this question to Harold, Gerd, Said and Benjamin.

 

...

 

> For the effect of standards on the current rules market: well you can

> judge there is some interest (from the vendors in RIF),

 

Yep.

 

>  but in terms of

> effect on the market I'd refer you to the "analysts" that cover this

> market.

 

Pointer? Why is "analysts" scare quoted?

[http://www.gartnergroup.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=125811 and similar
via Google]

Not everyone likes analysts
[http://blogs.pathf.com/business_rules/2006/03/shocking_forres.html]

 

>  AFAIK there has not been any public research on this topic that

> you can read about, so it will need to remain observations from 

> vendors.

 

Ok. So, do the vendors think that RIF will significantly help grow 

their market? Do they expect new competitors? What's the rough value 

add?  Do they care about anything other than PRs? If not, is there any 

point, to them, to the rest of RIF?

"Standards are good". Basically, a standard for rule interchange of
production rules will open up all the internet-based applications that
today rarely make it out of the lab. We have had several B2B customers
interested in swapping rules around, and of course they would prefer to
use an agnostic format. Increasing government use for production rules
also means that rule standards would be a market opener for vendors.

 

...

> For the (implied denial of) evolution of rule languages: not sure
where

> this discussion came from (all vendor rule languages are evolving /

> growing).

 

Well, I got the feeling that you were hostile to the idea that we might 

make choices in RIF that would force any specific evolution. Do you 

think that's just unlikely given a de facto large usable common subset 

that would neatly be the basis of RIF PR?

I'm certainly hostile to the idea that RIF will invent new requirements
for rule engines and languages without end-user validation. But it is
unlikely that RIF-PR will be very different from the PRR standard
(almost by definition).

 

...

 


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