- From: Obrst, Leo J. <lobrst@mitre.org>
- Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 18:21:13 -0400
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@inf.unibz.it>, <jos.deroo@agfa.com>
- Cc: <public-rif-wg@w3.org>
There are three ways to define the semantics, two formal, one informal: 1) proof theory: axioms; this is typically harder than (2) 2) model theory 3) a natural language description describing the operational semantics. Of course a 4th way is some combination of these. What else is there? Thanks, Leo -----Original Message----- From: public-rif-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-rif-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Peter F. Patel-Schneider Sent: Monday, May 08, 2006 6:12 PM To: jos.deroo@agfa.com Cc: public-rif-wg@w3.org Subject: Re: "Semantics" vs. "No Semantics" From: jos.deroo@agfa.com Subject: Re: "Semantics" vs. "No Semantics" Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 23:51:49 +0200 > > >I agree that there are many ways to approach semantics. While I'm not > >sure I would characterize model-theoretic semantics as more or less > >abstract than other approaches, I do fear that a model-theoretic > >semantics will be of little help > >to the implementors of RIF translators and associated rule engines. > >Looking at other W3C formal semantic specifications for guidance, I find > >http://www.w3.org/TR/xquery-semantics/ to be a good approach. Formal > >XQuery semantics are specified using RULES. Why can't we specify RIF > >semantics using rules? How would that be different from a proof theory? > We could even write those rules using RIF. > I like that idea very much! You mean using rules that we haven't given meaning to to give meaning to the rules? I suspect that there are some potential pitfalls there. > Looking for instance at pieces of > http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/ > one sees a recurring pattern of > Rule name | If E contains | then add > (and that is also how we implemented it). Well this is in the entailment rules sections, which are (only) informative. peter
Received on Monday, 8 May 2006 22:21:29 UTC