Re: soundness for RIF

Sandro Hawke wrote:
> I was asked to clarify my use of the term "sound" in the context of RIF.
>
> This came up because I proposed a requirement "Sound reasoning with
> unknown dialects", or more fully, "RIF Core must allow sound reasoning
> with unknown dialects." [1]
>
> I think this is one of the main requirements which will constraint the
> extensibility design.  The application context I'm imagining is use case
> 8, a query-answering process using deduction rules (database views)
> coming from a variety of sources.  My requirement here is that I be able
> to incorporate rulesets which include unknown extensions, and to know
> that even in the worst case I will not get wrong answers.
>
> In other word, I might incorporate a ruleset that includes this rule:
>
>     phoneNumberOfAssistant(Boss,Number) :-
>         assistant(Boss,Assistant),
>         phoneNumber(Assistant,Number).
>
> and also 
>
>     assistant(Boss,Assistant),
>     phoneNumber(Assistant,Number) :-
>        phoneNumberOfAssistant(Boss,Number).
>
> The first rule is a normal Horn clause.  The second is not.  I'm not
> sure what it is, really.  :-) 
Is the comma in the lewft hand side of the socond rule a conjunction? If
yes, then one can make two Horn rules out of it and most probably keep
the same meaning.

Francois

Received on Tuesday, 9 May 2006 08:22:07 UTC