Re: usage guide section 3.7 is broken

Jack,

In my opinion, we should not drop section 3.7. If you recall, it was added
to address a point that was repeatedly raised by some parts of the
community that they would get most value from the spec if some guidance is
given on how to represent preconditions and effects using SAWSDL spec. We
did not want to make any explicit statements about preconditions and
effects in the main spec. So, we chose to add some examples in the user
guide document. To the extent possible, we should fix up the rules and keep
it in the user guide. If the rules can't be fixed up to the point of
satisfaction and verification, I suggest we move the section to appendix,
with some caveats but not delete it completely.

Regarding your point on coming up with more plausible conditions and
effects, that would be good if anyone has any inputs. But I have already
sent out emails to the public semantic interest group seeking examples on
preconditions and effects at the time and have not received any response
from anyone. The only piece of input we got is from Thomas (thanks to him
for that)  and we have incorporated those. Frankly, although the current
conditions and effects are lame, they fit in the purchase order domain we
have described throughout the document. More plausible conditions may
require a lot of context and explanation of another example, which we have
purposefully avoided to keep the examples simple. From that point of view,
I think the current conditions are ok if not the best.

Regards
Rama Akkiraju





                                                                           
             Jacek Kopecky                                                 
             <jacek.kopecky@de                                             
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             08/20/2007 03:00          usage guide section 3.7 is broken   
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Dear all,

I have reviewed the Usage Guide section 3.7 and found that, basically,
the rule listings seem all to be broken to varying degrees (in fact, all
of them say "syntax subject to verification" which should not be the
case so close to finishing). These are just sample errors from those
I have spotted:
      * in 3.7-1, swrlb:subtract tests for equality, i.e. that the
        delivery date and order date are exactly two days apart, not at
        least two days
      * the listings use many undefined things - in 3.7-1 the term
        shipment(), in 3.7-2 the symbols waitingTime, deliveryTime etc.
        (not present in 3.7-1, while the two listings should be
        equivalent)
      * 3.7-3 has no XML root element so it's not well-formed, nor does
        it define any namespaces
      * 3.7-4 references wsml#subtract-dateTimes-yielding-day which is
        undefined
      * the rule names, well hidden in 3.7-3 and different from 3.7-4,
        are not at all intuitive

The document should be finished within a few days, and I see three
options how we can end up with a consistent document in such a
timeframe:
     1. we drop all the concrete syntax listings of the rules (3.7-1 -
        3.7-6), keep only the verbal description at the beginning of
        section 3.7 and update the model references in 3.7-8 to point to
        imaginary embodiments of rules, with descriptive names;
     2. we drop the whole section 3.7, seeing how we can't really make
        it concrete, and it puts annotations in places undefined in our
        spec (wsdl:input and wsdl:output) anyway;
     3. before the telcon, the editors (or anyone else interested in
        this) prepare listings (at least one for condition and one for
        effect) that are much more plausible than the current ones.

Also note that the text immediately preceding 3.7 should be moved to the
end of 3.7 if we decide to keep the section; it serves as a segue to
section 4.

Please comment; a course of action will be decided at the telcon
tomorrow. 8-)

Best regards,
Jacek

Received on Tuesday, 21 August 2007 02:33:49 UTC