[RIF Primer] Some initial suggestions

Chris, Sandro, Christian,

The agenda for today's RIF telecon has as item 9 the question of
developing a primer for RIF, and how that might be facilitated by using
content from UCR.

Since you (Chris and Sandro) discussed my working on a RIF primer/tutorial
at the end of the 2 March telecon, I've taken the liberty of writing up an
initial outline of what a RIF primer might look like. I've used as a model
--- very loosely --- the OWL Primer (a W3C recommendation) at
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/ .

I am expecting that much of the content of the RIF primer would be a
digest or restatement of portions of existing RIF documents (particularly
of the dialect specifications and of examples taken from UCR). However, I
also expect that there will be additional content consisting of
foundational material, motivation (?), discussion of existing
implementations, integrational material, and additional examples.

Suggested (initial) outline:

I. Introduction
  1.1 Guide to Document
  1.2 Motivation for RIF

2. Foundational Material
  2.1 Basics of declarative logic (Horn Logic, general first-order logic)
  2.2 Basics of production rule systems
  2.3 Choosing which paradigm to use: an example-driven discussion

3. Basic Dialects of RIF
  3.1 The structure of core, extension, and overlapping dialects
  3.2 Core: Syntax, Semantics, Examples
  3.3 BLD: Syntax, Semantics, Examples
  3.4 PRD: Syntax, Semantics, Examples
  3.5 FLD: Syntax, Sematnics, Examples

(Notes: Examples will be relatively small, compared to the ones in Section 5.
           Both traditional (model-theoretical) semantics and
xml-semantics given.
            (Probably necessitates a brief discussion in section 2 on
different sorts of semantics.))

4. RIF Built-ins and Compatibility with Other Standards
  4.1 DTB
  4.2 Compatibility with OWL and RDF


5. Discussion of Largish Examples (from UCR document, plus perhaps
examples that make specific points absent from use cases)

6. RIF in practice
  6.1 Existing RIF Implementations
    (Enumerate. Examples.
      This is the least fleshed-out part of the outline, but arguably the
must useful to users and most important to write.)
  6.2 Developing New RIF Implementations
  6.3 Testing RIF Implementation
    6.3.1 Test Suite

7. RIF in the Future
  7.1 RIF dialects in development
  7.2 Coming RIF implementations

This outline will no doubt be extended/modified in the very near future,
but it gives us something to start with.

Best regards,
Leora
-- 
Leora Morgenstern, Ph.D.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/leora

Received on Tuesday, 16 March 2010 14:48:49 UTC