Re: A proposal for a unitary RIF phase 1

> From: Michael Kifer <kifer@cs.sunysb.edu>
> Subject: Re: A proposal for a unitary RIF phase 1 
> Date: Sat, 27 May 2006 19:34:17 -0400
> 
> > Peter,
> > 
> > It is no big deal to be unitary by restricting the language to Datalog.
> > You don't even need to limit it to a function-free sublanguage. In our
> > roadmap the language was unitary also up to this point.
> 
> OK.
> 
> > The issue is how to build such a system in an extensible way so that it
> > could be extended to satisfy most of the RIF requirements.
> 
> Well, this is at least one of issues.  However, I don't see any particular
> preference for divergent semantics here.


I am not sure if I understand you here correctly, but what I meant was that
anything we do in Phase 1 needs to have a clear path to enabling further
extensions. These planned extensions will most likely influence Phase 1
because, for example, we need a way to say what the syntax and semantics of
a rule set is intended to be. Even though this might seem unnecessary in
the unitary world, this same rule set will have to live in a Phase 2
world with other semantics, so it must be prepared to declare its
characteristics in that larger context.


	--michael

Received on Sunday, 28 May 2006 07:26:09 UTC