Re: Lack of a standard rules language Re: Toward easier RDF: a proposal

Yes, N3 immediately addresses multiple points from the opening thread.

It's a great starting (and ending?) point, to this

On Thu, 22 Nov 2018, 14:40 Doerthe Arndt <doerthe.arndt@ugent.be wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> reading the below:
>
>
> 8. Lack of a standard rules language.  This is a big one.
> Inference is fundamental to the value proposition of RDF,
> and almost every application needs to perform some kind
> of application-specific inference.  ("Inference" is used
> broadly herein to mean any rule or procedure that produces new
> assertions from existing assertions -- not just conventional
> inference engines or rules languages.)  But paradoxically,
> we still do not have a *standard* RDF rules language.
> (See also Sean Palmer's apt observations about N3 rules.[14]) We want to
> move forward the standardisation of N3 since I think that it is really
> worth it:
>
> I think this is a good opportunity to get back to N3 Logic. We have worked
> with N3 for years now and there are several reasons why I believe that it
> should be standardized:
>
>    - Syntax:
>
>    For someone knowing turtle, writing N3 rules is easy since N3
>    seamlessly extends the rdf's turtle syntax without having to fall back on
>    debatable constructs like reification.
>    Example:
>    For a triple :s :p :o. a rule  {?x :p :o} => {?x :pp :oo}. would lead
>    to :s :pp :oo.
>
>    For reification, N3 also provides a solution in general which is very
>    close to the recent proposal of RDF* and could be aligned with it.
>    Example: :s :says {:s :p :o}.
>
>
>    - Practice:
>
>    There are already existing reasoners for N3 Logic Like Cwm (
>    https://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/doc/cwm.html) and EYE (
>    http://eulersharp.sourceforge.net/). The latter developed in industry
>    which can make us at least confident that N3 is able to cover "real" use
>    cases.
>
>    We used N3 in many practical use cases and had positive experiences
>    (for example
>    https://de.slideshare.net/ruleml2012/ruleml-2015-ontology-reasoning-using-rules-in-an-ehealth-context
>    and https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8540876).
>
> We already did some first steps towards the standardization by defining a
> model theory and identifying current problems:
>
>    - A recent talk about this topic at the RuleML Webinar (
>    https://wiki.ruleml.org/index.php/RuleML_Webinar) can be accessed
>    here:
>    https://github.com/RuleML/ruleml-website/blob/master/talks/DoertheArndt-SemN3Impl2ExplQuant-RuleMLWebinar-2018-09-28.pdf
>    - Earlier work was presented at RuleML 2015 (Slides:
>    https://de.slideshare.net/ruleml2012/ruleml-2015-semantics-of-notation3-logic-a-solution-for-implicit-quantification,
>    Paper: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-21542-6_9)
>    - We furthermore hope to soon publish a journal paper about this topic
>    which is currently under review.
>
> *Call to action:* who would support and/or join a W3C community group
> around an N3 rule language?
>
> Regards,
>
> Doerthe
>
> P.S.: To also get back to the rest of the ongoing discussion: N3 supports
> blank nodes and literals in all positions and treats lists as "first class
> citizens" (in practice that means that there are no blank nodes involved
> when expressing lists).
>
> --
> Dörthe Arndt
> Researcher Semantic Web
> imec - Ghent University - IDLab | Faculty of Engineering and Architecture | Department of Electronics and Information Systems
> Technologiepark-Zwijnaarde 19, 9052 Ghent, Belgium
> t: +32 9 331 49 59 | e: doerthe.arndt@ugent.be
>
>