Re: [UCR] RIF needs different reasoning methods

> >> Does the RIF (or the W3C) intend to ignore these distinctions?
> >
> > FWIW, the full and complete official statement of W3C intent is the
> > charter.
> >
> >    http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/charter
> >
> > It might be good to compare what you're thinking with what it says.
> >   
> All what I, and as I understand Gerd, suggest, is that the RIF should
> make it possible to attach annotations to rulesets stating: "this
> ruleset contains only deduction rules", or "this ruleset contains
> normative rules", or"this rule set contains only reactive rules". Would
> such annotations contradict the charter?

I think it depends on the exact purpose and meaning of those
annotations.  Some kinds of annotations can be fine -- like ones which
just save the reader some computation but can safely be ignored -- while
others can end up fragmenting a standard to the point where there are
none of the usual benefits of standardization.

As the charter says in the first paragraph:

     The Working Group is to specify a format for rules, so they can be
     used across diverse systems. This format (or language) will
     function as an interlingua into which established and new rule
     languages can be mapped, allowing rules written for one application
     to be published, shared, and re-used in other applications and
     other rule engines. 

It's not specified what kind of rulesets will be portable across what
kind of engines, but it seems to me clear that maximizing the range of
coverage should be one of our design goals.   That range probably has
two dimensions -- we want to cover many different rule systems, and we
want to cover many of the features of each rule system.   

To help keep us on track for Phase 1, the charter gives us a limit
(roughly Horn rules) on which features of each system we will cover.
Within that limit, I'm not sure there are many questions about which
systems to cover.

    -- sandro

Received on Friday, 10 March 2006 20:14:20 UTC