- From: Paul Vincent <pvincent@tibco.com>
- Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2006 23:57:28 -0800
- To: "Ginsberg, Allen" <AGINSBERG@imc.mitre.org>
- Cc: <public-rif-wg@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <8F4A4531BB49A74387A7C99C7D0B0E050192A52E@NA-PA-VBE02.na.tibco.com>
Thanks A|len. It seems to me that my email is broken - I was expecting some of our fellow RIF members, not usually shy with an opinion or observation, to arbitrate and/or point out the obvious flaws in my (or your) arguments by now. :-) PS: Happy Thanksgiving Paul Vincent TIBCO - ETG/Business Rules ________________________________ From: Ginsberg, Allen [mailto:AGINSBERG@imc.mitre.org] Sent: 22 November 2006 17:58 To: Paul Vincent Cc: public-rif-wg@w3.org Subject: RE: http://www.w3.org/2006/11/04-rif-minutes.html#action04: Notes from UCR breakout of 11/04 --> coverage Hi Paul, Just a quick response to points 1 & 2. When I said it "must be possible" to implement a rule engine for a RIF dialect, I did not mean this as a "requirement," rather as something that follows from the fact (requirement) that every RIF dialect must have precise syntax and semantics. As you say, it is a "side effect." Since the whole idea is to give an "intuitive" and "informal" definition of "coverage" at this stage, I think it is ok to talk as though RIF is executable by some appropriate piece of software. Allen ________________________________ From: Paul Vincent [mailto:pvincent@tibco.com] Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 12:46 PM To: Ginsberg, Allen Cc: public-rif-wg@w3.org Subject: RE: http://www.w3.org/2006/11/04-rif-minutes.html#action04: Notes from UCR breakout of 11/04 --> coverage Thanks Allen: Yes we probably need to agree to disagree and move to arbitration! So I cc'd the rif-wg for other comments on this topic. My thoughts on your comments below are: 1. As RIF is an interchange format, the fact that a RIF dialect may be considered a rule language must be a side effect - and therefore should not be reflected in the definitions. In other words it is not necessary for RIF dialects to be a rule language. 2. Why must it be possible to implement a rule engine for a RIF (format) dialect? For example, I can use XML as an interchange language for representing SQL queries. However, this does not mean I *need* to have database engines that can execute said XML. To me, this requirement seems somewhat orthogonal to the charter. 3. Mentioning software is also orthogonal. For example, why cannot a rule translation be handled manually, like it may be done today and will be done for initial examples I am sure? Again, this does not seem to be a requirement (although of course it *is* a requirement that the process is automatable). 4. Circularity: possibly my definition was circular. Perhaps Coverage should imply translation to, from or to+from a RIF dialect. An updated version of my coverage proposal would therefore be: * "RIF covers a rule language" if 1. rules written in the covered rule language can be translated to, from, or both to and from a dialect of RIF and 2. rules mapped from 1 language to another via a RIF dialect exhibit equivalent behavior Note: I did not use "identical" behaviour as it is not the remit of RIF to standardize rule engine outputs. So if I have 2 rules: If customer is new then customer credit period is 1 month If customer is new then customer credit period is 1 week Then the equivalent behaviour is to either assign a customer credit period of 1 month or 1 week (depending on the rule engine). Cheers Paul Vincent TIBCO - ETG/Business Rules PS: my original counterproposal sent as PPT was: * "RIF covers a rule language" means 1. rules written in the covered rule language can be translated into a dialect of RIF and 2. the resulting rules represented in RIF can then be mapped to some target rule language, other than the original language, to achieve the same behavior as the original rules ________________________________ From: Ginsberg, Allen [mailto:AGINSBERG@imc.mitre.org] Sent: 22 November 2006 17:15 To: Paul Vincent Subject: RE: http://www.w3.org/2006/11/04-rif-minutes.html#action04: Notes from UCR breakout of 11/04 Hi Paul, I see your point, but I don't agree. For many intents and purposes a RIF dialect should be considered a rule language. Perhaps no one will ever implement a rule engine for a given a dialect, but it must be possible to do that. Moreover, if we don't talk about "software that works with RIF" then we need to say that "coverage" means translating from L to other rule languages in the same dialect that are also "covered" by RIF. But that is clearly a circular definition, i.e., when we say that "RIF covers rule language L" we mean that any rules written in L can be translated into a dialect of RIF and the resulting RIF document can be translated into any rule language covered by the same RIF dialect... Allen ________________________________ From: Paul Vincent [mailto:pvincent@tibco.com] Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 3:47 PM To: Ginsberg, Allen Subject: http://www.w3.org/2006/11/04-rif-minutes.html#action04: Notes from UCR breakout of 11/04 Hi Allen - Re ACTION: PaulV to work with Allen on defn of covers [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2006/11/04-rif-minutes.html#action04] I was trying to recall the discussion on Coverage from the F2F and all I had was (a) your note below and (b) my PPT edits (attached). I note my edits attempted to add (some of) the vigor you were trying to avoid... oh well. Looking at your text again: Intuitively, when we say that "RIF covers rule language L" we mean that rules written in L can be translated into a dialect of RIF Which is OK and the resulting RIF rules can be used by software designed to work with RIF This seems redundant - why refer to external software in a definition of coverage? to achieve essentially the same functionality as enabled by the original L rules. This part is fundamentally incorrect for a rule interchange format. The behavior described is a corollary of a rule being interchanged from 1 language via RIF into another language. Indeed I dislike the term "RIF rules" as its open to misinterpretation implying RIF is a rules language, and is ambiguous with transformation rules (to and from RIF). Any thoughts? Paul Vincent TIBCO - ETG/Business Rules -----Original Message----- From: public-rif-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-rif-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Ginsberg, Allen Sent: 05 November 2006 13:18 To: public-rif-wg@w3.org Subject: Notes from UCR breakout of 11/04 [PV>] ... PROPOSED TEXT ON COVERAGE: We note that in this document we deliberately refrain from defining the notion of "coverage" in a rigorous manner, since precisely what it means for diverse rule languages to be "covered" by RIF may vary from case to case. Intuitively, when we say that "RIF covers rule language L" we mean that rules written in L can be translated into a dialect of RIF and the resulting RIF rules can be used by software designed to work with RIF to achieve essentially the same functionality as enabled by the original L rules. [PV>] ...
Received on Monday, 27 November 2006 07:57:44 UTC