Re: comments on Editor's Draft of UCR -- motivates links

From: "Hirtle, David" <David.Hirtle@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca>
Subject: RE: comments on Editor's Draft of UCR -- motivates links
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 14:36:47 -0400

> Hi Peter and all,
> 
> Though we decided during the call not to include the motivates links in
> this draft, here are some justifications for the use cases I worked on
> (2.6 - 2.10).
> 
> > Motivations that I believe are not supported:
> > 
> > Coverage
> > 
> > 	RIF must cover the set of languages identified in the Rulesystem
> > 	Arrangement Framework.
> > 
> > 	not motivated by Use Case 2.1, Use Case 2.2, Use Case 
> > 2.4, Use Case
> > 	2.5, Use Case 2.6, Use Case 2.7, Use Case 2.9
> > 
> > 	This is more of a problem with the wording of the 
> > Coverage CSF than
> > 	anything else.  The Coverage CSF should probably be rewritten to
> > 	something like
> > 
> > 	RIF must cover a reasonably wide selection of rule sets.
> 
> Probably every use case motivates at least one requirement falling under
> RIFRAF and therefore motivates the current catch-all "Coverage"
> requirement. (Likewise "Semantic Precision".)

I agree that they motivate *some* coverage requirement, but certainly not
the current coverage requirement, which requires coverage of (all of) the
RIFRAF languages!

> > Semantic tagging
> > 
> > 	RIF must have a standard way to specify the *intended* [emphasis
> > 	added] semantics (or semantics style) of the 
> > interchanged rule set
> > 	in a RIF document.
> > 
> > 	not motivated by Use Case 2.2, Use Case 2.3, Use Case 
> > 2.4, Use Case
> > 	2.10 
> > 
> >  	unless, of course, all that it means is that RIF rules 
> > have to have
> > 	a formal semantics.
> 
> Use case 2.10 emphasizes publishing (not so much interchanging) rules,
> but I'm assuming that it would be desirable to publish the intended
> semantics of the rules along with the rules themselves.

And how can one do so?  Intended semantics is what was "intended", which is
generally more than what was formalized.

> > Default behaviour
> > 
> > 	RIF must specify at the appropriate level of detail the default
> > 	behavior that is expected from a RIF compliant application that
> > 	does not have the capability to process all or part of the rules
> > 	described in a RIF document, or it must provide a way to specify
> > 	such default behavior.
> > 
> > 	not motivated by Use Case 2.2, Use Case 2.4, Use Case 
> > 2.5, Use Case
> > 	2.6 
> 
> From use case 2.6:
> 
> "This use case illustrates how the RIF makes it possible to merge
> rulesets from diverse sources in diverse formats into one rule-based
> system, thereby enabling inferences that might otherwise have remained
> implicit."
> 
> This rule-based system may get rules that it can't (completely) process
> and involves important medical decisions so I'd say that default
> behavior is motivated.

I still don't see this as part of the use case.  I don't see how the use
case speaks to partial understanding of rule sets.  On the contrary, I
would say that this use case speaks to the necessity of *complete*
processing of rule sets, because otherwise some important rule might no be
processed accurately and someone might die.

> > OWL data
> > 
> > 	RIF must cover OWL knowledge bases as data where compatible with
> > 	Phase 1 semantics.
> > 
> > 	not motivated by Use Case 2.4, Use Case 2.6
> 
> While 2.6 doesn't specifically mention OWL, it does mention ontologies
> as a possible data source. I think parts of SNOMED have been translated
> to OWL, but I'm no expert.

Sure, but you can write (very, very, very) simple ontologies in just RDFS,
so there is no demonstrated need for OWL.

> David

Note that many of my complaints could be addressed by appropriate
modification of the use cases.

peter

Received on Tuesday, 27 June 2006 21:08:49 UTC