RIF: A thought about requirements

Frank - this is an astute observation, but I am biased of course!

It was my understanding that RIF phase 1 was more of an "academic"
exercise (without PRR), but subsequent phases would address PRR. 

Paul Vincent
for Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor  -- Business Rule Management System
@ OMG and W3C standards for rules
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-rif-wg-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-rif-wg-request@w3.org]
> On Behalf Of Francis McCabe
> Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2006 6:15 PM
> To: W3C RIF WG
> Subject: A thought about requirements
> 
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 

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Received on Sunday, 28 May 2006 18:01:33 UTC