[RIF][UCR] Straw poll comments

Dear all,

Here are my (quick) comments on the UC.

One general comment (already made in different forms by others), is that 
less UC, but with slightly differently focused, could be better, both in 
terms of coverage and in terms of impact. Shortly (because I have to go 
home), I see to broad classes of UC:
- UC about porting rules from one platform to another, for different 
purposes (and thus, maybe, with different requirements on the RIF);
- UC about publishing rules for different purposes (and thus, maybe,...).

Essentially, UC 3 and 5 fall in the first pot; UC 1, 4, 6 and 8 in the 
second one. UC 2 might fall in either class, depends on how you 
interpret it: I tend to see it as a case of porting rules between 
platforms for the purpose of aggregation, but it could be seen as a case 
of publishing rules (e.g. by the pharmaceutical companies) for use by, 
e.g. MEDIC. And 7? Well, 7 is part the first calss, part the second, and 
maybe part something else and could be in a class of itself :-)

Maybe we could consider restructuring the UC section fo the UC&R 
document along those lines, and probably merge some of the UC (or parts 
thereof) in the process, hopefully ending with less UC.

Another general comment, already made several times, is that the style 
of the UC should unified. It should be modified, in addition: I seems to 
me that the point(s) that the different UC purport to make might often 
be lost because they are not made explicitely enough: either making the 
important points explicitely in the scenarii (important in terms of 
requirements or design goals they set or are likely to set on the RIF); 
or adding systematically a conclusion that summarises those points (or 
an introduction, although I woudl rather keep the introduction for 
setting the general scene for the, more specific, scenario).

Here below, some UC per UC comments (copied from the comment section in 
my answer to the poll, for your convenience :-):

- 2.1 Information integration (no): This is more a use case for using 
rules when information is interchanged (to specify/execute the mapping 
between different information models),  than for interchanging rules. 
The first scenario is at best unconvincing. I do not really understand 
the second scenario (wrt rule interchange).

- 2.2 Decision support (no): Here again, it reads more like an UC for 
using rules than for exchanging them. The one sentence that suggests 
rules interchange ("The rules in MEDIC have been automatically 
generated...") suggest an interesting use case, on the other hand, that 
ought to be developed.

-2.3 Cross-Platform Rule Development and Deployment (yes, but...): An 
introduction (or a conclusion) should be added, that generalises the 
scenario and summarising the point(s) this UC is supposed to make (or 
they should be made more explicit in the scenario itself). This remarks 
apply to all UC, btw: they should be more uniform.

- 2.4 Policy-Based Transaction Authorization and Access Control (yes, 
but..): The second part of the scenario does not include rule 
interchange (after the third paragraph).

- 2.5 Interchange of Human-oriented Business Rules (yes, but...): This 
UC should be rewritten to take a more scenario-like form (and shorter). 
Part of it overlaps with UC nr. 7 (3rd-party rule-interchange services): 
interchanging rules to achieve a common understanding of, e.g., what a 
regulation means (how it can/must be implemented; how acceptable 
compliance can be achieved; ...). However, the publication of 
regulation, policies, rules etc for compliance enforcing purposes is an 
important use case (and, indeed, the rules are not necessarily or solely 
meant for machine consumption).

- 2.6 Publication (yes, but...): Style for rule examples should be 
unified (over the whole section, actually).

- 2.7 Third Party Rule-Interchange Services (yes, but...): A bit "heavy" 
to read...

- 2.8 Rich Knowledge Representation (yes, but...): is that really 
different from UC nr. 6 (publication).

- Coverage (no): Should we have "vendor-neutral persistence of rules" as 
an explicit use case (although is is really a limit application of the 
cross-platform UC (nr. 3)?
The UC do not cover explicitely everything that is important to ILOG 
(e.g. regarding object model and/or data access, non logical features - 
actions in the conclusion, etc), although I think they could be modified to.

Christian

Received on Thursday, 23 February 2006 19:24:24 UTC