[UCR] UC clarification (completes action 96)

All,

(I hope this message completes action 96, that is, makes it clear why I 
find that some of the UC are not clear enough :-)

Some of the UC are not clear enough in that they do not explain clearly:
1. why RIF would be useful and what the benefits would be, and/or
2. how RIF would be used and with what requirements.

A touchstone for (1) is looking at what would happen without RIF: if the 
UC works fine without interchanging rules in another form, the benefits 
of interchange, and RIF, should be stated explicitely. An example were 
they are not so clear is UC 2 (negotiating eCommerce transactions 
through disclosure of buyer and seller policies and preferences; 
although it has been improved, the case for policy interchange remains 
rather weak, in my opinion). An example where it is not clear (to me) 
what rules are interchanged, between which parties and for what purpose 
is UC 9 (BPEL orchestration of rule-based Web services).

UC 7 (interchanging rule extensions to OWL) does not really provide a 
scenario for rule interchange, either, but I understand that some UCs 
can focus on one single aspect (here, the requirement that RIF must be 
able to extend OWL; the case for interchange thus depends on the case 
for interchanging ontologies).

Regarding (2), one issue on which many of the UC could be more helpful 
is the protocol of rule interchange: who initiate the interchange, what 
happens on the other side, e.g. if the party that receives/retrieves the 
rules cannot understand them, etc: again, not all the UCs need to be 
specific about such issues, but, particularly regarding error handling 
and/or "dialect" mismatch, it would be useful to have at least one UC be 
specific.

Another aspect that could be usefully clarified in some of the use cases 
is the relationship between interchanged rules, vocabularies and datasets.

As I proposed in a previous email, I wonder if we should not include a 
discussion of each of the UC that would make explicit the benefit of 
using RIF in the UC, how RIF is used (the protocal of interchange), and 
the requirements on RIF that the use case illustrate. And maybe a more 
general discussion of how the different UCs cover the field.

Christian

Received on Monday, 25 September 2006 16:02:16 UTC