ISSUE-29: Profiles in the RIF Core

ISSUE-29: Profiles in the RIF Core

http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/track/issues/29

Raised by: Deborah Nichols
On product: Technical Design

Opened by Deborah Nichols [on behalf of RIF Chairs]

This issue concerns whether the use of profiles should be included in the 
specification of the RIF CORE.

On 16 January 2007, Michael Kifer raised the issue of whether the RIF Core 
should have profiles (i.e., a specification of "optional features").  This 
leads to the question whether we should require that all dialects and all 
compliant RIF languages support translation to/from all of the core.

Chris Welty’s summary of the telecon discussion from 16 January 
(http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2007Jan/0093):

“We then went on discussing the nature of the CORE. The discussion centered
on whether or not all languages were required to be able to translate 
FROM "all" of  the CORE to be conformant.  Some continue to feel this is 
unrealistic, however we lack examples that demonstrate it.  Several expressed 
support for a very limited notion of profiles for the CORE.  Profiles would 
specify features that we may consider ‘optional’ or that may determine the 
degree of conformance of a translation. Examples of features in a possible 
CORE profile were: recursion, decidability, complexity bounds, functions.

“There seemed to be consensus that there is one core dialect with the 
expressivity of  about Horn and that we should move forward with the 
specification of that dialect, independently of other considerations.  If 
there is a notion of profiles it should be extremely restricted so that 
the ‘CORE is still a core’.  At the moment, we do not have any 
specific "features" of the CORE that anyone has objected to, except possibly 
recursive rules, so it is still not clear that we need profiles for the CORE.

“We discussed whether RIF dialects must include and extend the [entire] CORE.  
The possibility of profiles opens the door for some dialects to eliminate 
certain features (again, from a very restricted set).  In other words, 
profiles may allow some dialects to extend a subset of the CORE.

“There seemed to be consensus that the definition of the mandatory CORE must 
be motivated by practical considerations, such as the difficulty to translate 
a 
particular feature to a particular rule language of practical importance.”
Relevant email threads:

An early proposal advocating an ‘80%’ profile:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Feb/0109.

Discussion of RIF and conformance profiles:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Mar/0039. 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Mar/0046. 
The referenced KIF conformance profile: 
http://logic.stanford.edu/kif/dpans.html#12.3.

See “Conformance Model” on the list of slide topics/goals from F2F3:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Jun/0105. 

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Dec/0084
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Dec/0086
Michael’s “anti-conformance profile” argument:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Dec/0087 
Bijan’s response: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-
wg/2006Dec/0089.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Dec/0096.html. 
Michael’s distinction between “compliance” and implementation:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rif-wg/2006Dec/0098.

Related issues:  This issue is related to Issue # 28 concerning recursion, 
because recursion was one of the features that was suggested to be made 
specifiable in a profile.

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 15:06:40 UTC