Re: RIF: A thought about requirements --> PRR

From: Christian de Sainte Marie <csma@ilog.fr>
Subject: Re: RIF: A thought about requirements --> PRR
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 13:48:48 +0200

> As I see it, a RIF that covers logical as well as production rules would:
	[I view the wording in the above phrase as not even-handed.]
> - help SemWeb technologies enter the market mainstream (mainstream PR 
	[I don't see the mainstream PR vendors as the rule market 
	mainstream.  I instead view the DBMS vendors as the true rule
	market mainstream.] 
> users will deploy RIF; doing so, they will have a bridge into OWL, RDF, 
> etc at no or little additional cost; build a bridge, and almost surely 
> somebody will use it...);
> - and it would help mainstream (in a market sense) rule technologies 
> enter the Web, including the Semantic Web (same line of reasoning as above).

I believe that this depends on *how* the RIF would cover both logical and
production rules.  If the RIF is in essence multiple formalisms sharing at
most a portion of the syntax (with the production rule formalisms being
disjoint from the formalisms that cover logical rules and the existing W3C
Semantic Web languages), then I don't see how it would advance either of
the above goals.  I could even see such a RIF being a hindrance to both
these goals because it would engender a false sense of progress and a
subsequent lessing of actual activity towards these goals.

> My understanding was that this mutual benefit (depending on wide 
> adoption) was a major reason to try to cover the different approaches in 
> as far a common way as possible. Of course, this has a cost for 
> everybody, as we all knew it from the start. And we (all of us) decided 
> to try it anyway and to cooperate with the other groups in that endeavour.

Well, at least we all should have agreed that our separate understandings
of the charter of the working group were somehow related to possible
futures that we found potentially desirable.  Whether this results in
cooperation then has much to do with whether the disparate understandings
can be reconciled in some useful fashion.

> It will be useful to reconsider this strategy if and when the cost 
> proves unacceptable for one side or another. I do not think that we have 
> this kind of evidence yet: could we now stop this thread and restart the 
> discussion from a constructive point of view (e.g. following Gary's 
> comment [1]), please?

It seems to me that there has been recent evidence in the WG mailing list
supporting the contention that there is indeed some feeling that some
interpretations of WG documents by WG members are unacceptable to other
members of the WG.  I'm not convinced that the situation is unrepairable,
but I do worry that ignoring it will simply drive it underground, to
surface later when it will cause even more problems.

> Christian
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Jun/0000.html

Peter F. Patel-Schneider

Received on Thursday, 1 June 2006 18:39:52 UTC