Re: [RIF] [UCR]: What is the RIF (revisited) --> changing vendor rule languages

"Vincent, Paul D" <PaulVincent@fairisaac.com> wrote:
>
> There are certainly similarities between the rules market today and the
> SQL market of the early 80s. This is why the vendors are supporting the
> OMG PRR and RIF efforts. However, so far there is zero push for
> additional rule construct support in the rule languages. 

Perhaps those customers don't know better?

But ask companies like Ontoprise, OntologyWorks, XSB Inc., etc., to get a
different view.

> Possibly a better comparison between PRR(/RIF version of PRR) would be to
> BPEL. 

RIF has little to share technically with BPEL, but a lot with SQL.

> 
> > Perhaps the reason why the rules
> > market is fairly small is because the current commercial rule languages 
> > are so pathetically poor and ill-founded.
> 
> If this is the case I have not seen any evidence to support it, and would
> welcome any links to support this hypothesis!

I dunno about the links. But I can tell you about my own limited experience
consulting for companies. (Consulting is not what I do regularly or
eagerly, hence the disclaimer.) Twice my clients needed a rule language and
twice we considered various commercial products, including some from
companies represented in RIF. And twice we decided to use something else,
non-commercial and open source. The commercial offerings just didn't cut it.

Now, they didn't run to report to the world that commercial offerings are
unsuitable --- they just picked something else.


	--michael  

> 
> Paul Vincent
> Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor --- Business Rule Management
> OMG Standards for Business Rules, PRR & BPMI
> mobile: +44 (0)781 493 7229 ... office: +44 (0)20 7871 7229 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Kifer [mailto:kifer@cs.sunysb.edu] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 3:57 PM
> To: Vincent, Paul D
> Cc: Francois Bry; public-rif-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: [RIF] [UCR]: What is the RIF (revisited) --> changing vendor rule languages 
> 
> 
> I remember that SQL people were saying similar things about a bunch of
> features in the 80s. And then they included them in SQL:1999 as a result of
> customer pressures. For instance, explicit quantifiers and recursion.
> Meanwhile, some vendors, facing customer pressure, added some features
> without waiting for the standard. For instance, Oracle added recursion way
> back. Unfortunately, the people who designed this extension for Oracle had
> no foggiest idea about what they were trying to do, and the result was
> nothing short of an abomination.
> 
> RIF should stay away from this approach.  Perhaps the reason why the rules
> market is fairly small is because the current commercial rule languages are
> so pathetically poor and ill-founded.
> 
> 
> 	--michael  
> 
> 
> "Vincent, Paul D" <PaulVincent@fairisaac.com> wrote:
> > 
> > Most vendor rule languages are still in active development. However, it
> >  is quite rare to get a rule language change request from a
> >  customer. Certainly I have
> >  never seen any requests to move for example Blaze Advisor SRL in the
> >  direction of some of the concepts described in the RIF threads.
> > 
> > Of course, a customer needing a particular language feature would select a rule engine having that feature. The fact that 70-80% of the commercial rule eng
> in
> > e market is provided by 2 vendors indicates some level of maturity about their rule languages.
> > 
> > Paul Vincent
> > Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor --- Business Rule Management
> > OMG Standards for Business Rules, PRR & BPMI
> > mobile: +44 (0)781 493 7229 ... office: +44 (0)20 7871 7229 
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: public-rif-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-rif-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Francois Bry
> > Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 1:57 PM
> > To: public-rif-wg@w3.org
> > Cc: public-rif-wg@w3.org
> > Subject: Re: [RIF] [UCR]: What is the RIF (revisited)
> > 
> > 
> > Dave Reynolds wrote:
> > 
> > > If we look at the business rules market then we have a number of 
> > > mature and successful products. One goal for RIF in that market is to 
> > > enable users to move rules between systems, in which case RIF is for 
> > > interchange between well-established systems. No vendor will change 
> > > their language to move towards some invented RIF language. 
> > 
> > What about customers? They often make vendors move...
> > -- 
> > 
> > Francois
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 9 February 2006 16:57:12 UTC