RE: Comment on * DRAFT * Rules Working Group Charter 1.60

Adrian,

Certainly your points are valid. But I wonder if it wouldn't be
beneficial to come up with a core language which would serve as an
easily translatable subset of any vendor's language. There would be a
number of ways this could be used, e.g., creating modules of rules which
conform to the core restrictions, or even just grouping or tagging the
rules which conform to allow automatic translation of some part of a
vendor's rules. Conformance to these core restrictions might be
optional, but if there is enough benefit vendors might choose to do
their best to follow them. This would be similar to what we see in other
domains where vendors adhere to a standard but offer optional extensions
which differentiate their product.

Does any of this sound appealing, or more importantly, feasible?

Cheers,

James Lynn
HP Software Services
Philadelphia, PA

215 922 2257


-----Original Message-----
From: www-rdf-rules-request@w3.org [mailto:www-rdf-rules-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Adrian Walker
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:49 AM
To: Sandro Hawke
Cc: public-rule-workshop-discuss@w3.org; www-rdf-rules@w3.org; Dieter
Fensel; edbark@nist.gov; Michael Kifer
Subject: Re: Comment on * DRAFT * Rules Working Group Charter 1.60 


Sandro --

At 01:39 AM 8/23/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>We're talking about one language which is a superset of many of the 
>common languages, so it can be used as an interlingua.  You translate 
>your ruleset into it, and if you can translate it back out into another

>vendor's language (because it has enough features), your rules will 
>mean the same thing.

Unfortunately, it makes no sense to translate rulesets from one vendor's
language into another [1].

This is because the results you get from running rules depend on which
variation of which kind of engine is used.  So, your rules will
regrettably
*not* "mean the same thing" in another vendor's system.

One can visualize acres of list discussions of the form "were you using
Jena 1.5.4.3.2a with the 5.2.1.3.4 fix to backward chaining engine with
mysql semi-persistence to get the result that George Washington is the
current president of the US?"

Why not start small, with something that works?  Recommend a way in
which diverse rule systems can interoperate at the input-output level,
e.g. as in [1].

Once you get that going, there will be practical reasons for a few
engine behaviors (aka "semantics") to emerge as ones that can usefully
be the subject of the next recommendation.

HTH,          Cheers,  -- Adrian

[1]  http://www.w3.org/2004/12/rules-ws/paper/19/




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Received on Tuesday, 23 August 2005 14:00:54 UTC