- From: Francis McCabe <frankmccabe@mac.com>
- Date: Sun, 28 May 2006 10:15:07 -0700
- To: W3C RIF WG <public-rif-wg@w3.org>
This note is in reaction to what I feel is a misplaced spirit in this group. I do not have the numbers to hand, but my estimation is that in the 'rules market', it would not surprise me if the 'production rule'- based technology owned 95% of the market. But you would not know that watching the traffic on this list. By ignoring the PRR side of the side this group risks making itself irrelevant. Rather than frame the requirements in terms of horn logic vs full 1st order vs etc. I think that it would be better to focus on the application needs of rules. For example, I can see rules being used to 1. express policies 2. express contracts 3. express business logic etc. I am sure that there are many more of course, these are the areas I have an interest in. A focus on expressing policies, contracts would result in a totally different approach to developing the RIF. For example, policy languages span a range between trivial (WS-Policy) and requiring modal operators (REI). Contracts tend to be about the rights and responsibilities of the parties. (Note: I *am* thinking about executable contracts: think SLAs for Web services.) Business logic is often in the form of "In this situation, do that". If we followed such an approach, instead of asking questions about extensibility, multiple semantics etc. we would be asking "what does it take to address this need", where need is an application need not a technology need. The current requirements WIKI page does not reflect this. Instead it attempts to synthesize the gestalt of the groups current thinking. That is what I am addressing here. Frank
Received on Sunday, 28 May 2006 17:15:25 UTC