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

"Vincent, Paul D" <PaulVincent@fairisaac.com> wrote:
>
> Michael Kifer Wrote:
>
> > "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?
>  
> Possibly, but more likely their needs are simple enough to be addressed
> by the main commercial vendors.
>  
> > But ask companies like Ontoprise, OntologyWorks, XSB Inc., etc., to get a
> > different view.
>  
> Well, these are a different class of rules platform (ontology-based
> rules). A perfectly valid class, but one that seems to have a much
> smaller market share today.

In 1982, SQL market was infinitesimally small compared to other DB
products.  And those competitors were arguing that the needs of their
customers are perfectly met by hierarchical DB products. They also used to
claim that relational DBs will never fly because they are unimplementable,
non-scalable, cause leprosy and impotence. Are we hearing the same arguments
again? ;-)


> > > > 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.
> 
> I can quite believe it if the need was to reason over an ontology.
> 

No, not ontology reasoning. A fairly simple reasoning, which could be done
easily with simple Prolog, but was hard to control with forward-chaining
production rules.

> I will offer you a beer at the next F2F to discuss further!

Wine. I'll take that beer next time, when the F2F will be in Belgium :-)


	--michael

Received on Thursday, 9 February 2006 18:23:20 UTC