Re: requirements slides

>From http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/UCR/Critical_Factors_Analysis and
the requirements slides:

	A 'no surprises' rule interchange is only possible if the original
	semantics of the rule sets to be interchanged is specified. Thus, a
	means is needed for specifying which formal semantics the rule set
	to be interchanged has.

I do not believe that this is correct, at least in the way that it appears
to be driving at, i.e., some syntactic means in RIF documents to
differentiate between different original semantics.

Consider, for example, KIF (the Knowledge Interchange Format - one starting
point is http://logic.stanford.edu/kif/kif.html).  In this interchange
format there is no tagging of the original semantics - instead the
interchange format is supposed to be universal in some sense, but unitary.
[This should not, in any way, be considered to be an endorsement of KIF.]

Consider as well an "intersection" RIF that only tries to interchange the
absolutely common part of different rule formalisms (assuming, sort of,
that this common part is non-empty).  Again there is no need to specify the
original semantics of the rule set.

One could also have a "best effort" kind of RIF, where the translations
from different rule formalisms abstracted from the original semantics into
a common semantic rule framework.  Here again there is no need to specify
the original semantics of the rule set.

peter

Received on Friday, 9 June 2006 11:14:22 UTC