Re: [UCR] use case response

At 10:00 +0000 2/21/06, Dave Reynolds wrote:
>Jim Hendler wrote:
>
>>  Let me make clear my motivation about the following - I think too 
>>many people in this group are still working on use cases for 
>>rule-based reasoning, not for Web rules or rule exchange.
>
>Jim, can you explain what you mean by "web rules" here?
>
>As I tried to explain in:
>http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Feb/0105.html
>our primary interest is in a language which would enable people 
>working with semantic web data to use rules. This would include 
>people expressing rules which they are explicitly publishing for 
>others to use but also includes people just using rules within a 
>system which is consuming and producing semantic web data.

sorry, I don't see the latter as very interesting or worth spending 
W3C resources on - the interoperability in that case is all with 
respect to existing standards.  In fact, I see nothing in the scope 
of this WG that talks to simply using rules with respect to a system 
using Sem Web data.  If I take the results of a SPARQL query, parse 
it into some kind of internal DB, and run a prolog program on it, 
then I am doing what you say, and I see no reason for the W3C to do 
more for that then was already done in the creation of SPARQL

>
>This is analogous to query. There is value in the ability to send 
>SPARQL queries to remote sources but some SPARQL queries will only 
>ever get used within a given system yet the value of standardizing 
>the language for those is still high (safe-guarding investment, 
>encourage tool provision, ability to shift between tools).

I don't disagree, but I don't see where that involves W3C - there are 
plenty of other places for doing rules languages per se.

>
>We accept that it is not the purpose of RIF to define a rule 
>language that will meet our needs. However, by requiring RDF and OWL 
>compatibility RIF may end up providing a framework which will meet 
>our needs as a side effect.
>

ok, that I agree wth

>Now the WG could decide that this desire for a side-effect is in 
>conflict with the main goal, that the group should only be about 
>rule exchange and have no regard to the possibility of a semantic 
>web rule language. That would be just fine and would simplify my 
>life considerably.
>

I don't understand, the notion of a Sem Web rule language is okay 
with me, but that isn't the same as what you said above -- i.e. if 
we're standardizing something for specific use on and with the Web 
then it is within W3C coverage

>So had you just contrasted "rule-based reasoning" with "rule 
>exchange" I would understand where you were coming from. But you've 
>left open this "web rules" bit which seems somewhere between the 
>two. So what do you mean by "web rules"?
>

I was primarily using "web rule" to mean a syntactic standard for 
representing rules in one of the major Web languages  and explicitly 
grounded in URI space - I generally use "Web ?x" to mean ?x being 
webized as in [1]
  -JH


[1] http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Webize.html
-- 
Professor James Hendler			  Director
Joint Institute for Knowledge Discovery	 	  301-405-2696
UMIACS, Univ of Maryland			  301-314-9734 (Fax)
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