ACTION-305: Review Paula's Phase 2 requirements and discuss

To fulfill this action, I'll list the requirements from 
http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/Design_Constraints, indicate with 
"-", "+", or "++" whether I don't like it, like it, or love it (no point 
being ambivalent), and give a brief rationale.

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Full Coverage of RDF  -
RDF is not yet widely adopted for business applications

Full Coverage of OWL -
ditto

External Calls +
some use cases exist for business rules accessing external stores 
directly, although most usage is via Java or XML (other middleware 
components may access external stores and convert data to Java or XML 
for use by rules)

Uncertain and Probabilistic Information -
Business analysts' logic is fuzzy enough already ;-)

Meta-Data for Currency of Rules ++
assume "currency" means "this rule is effective from <datetime> until 
<datetime>"

UML Data +
Much more popular way to model data in business applications than is 
RDF/OWL at present

ORM Fact Model Populations -
Not supported by our application stack

XML Representation ++
Very important for our SOA / integration / Fusion apps / middleware

Combined Access +
Although the combination of choice is XML + Java

Modules ++
But how does this differ from phase 1 rulesets?

Procedural Attachments ++
Assuming these can be fashioned into production rule actions

Priorities ++
Typical use case: first run some rules to make some "intermediate 
inferences", then run some rules to aggregate those inferences

Events +
Rules can be used for "complex event processing"

Composite Events +
ditto

Production Rules ++
Most business rule systems are based on production rules

ECA Rules ++
Oracle has ECA rules integrated in the database

Some write-in candidates:

Aggregation ++
See for example http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/wiki/UC9_Worked_Example

Decision tables ++
This metaphor is concise, familiar, and easy to use for the business 
analyst.

Negation as failure ++
if no BadThings then ... is very common in business rules

Received on Tuesday, 24 July 2007 04:42:01 UTC