News Release: World Wide Web Consortium Launches Rule Interchange Format Working Group

Tim Berners-Lee has just announced the formation of the Rules 
Interchange Format Working Group at the Information Juggernaut event in 
Galway, Ireland.

"After years of industry and research work in rule languages, I'm 
pleased to see W3C Members working to develop a Web-based rules 
standard," explained Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C. "The bringing 
together of business rules vendors, user companies, rule language 
designers and Semantic Web developers to create a rules standard is an 
important step in achieving the full power of the Semantic Web."

For more information, please contact the W3C Communications Team 
representative in your region.

World Wide Web Consortium Launches Rule Interchange Format Working Group
W3C aims to bring together Business Rules and Web Architecture

Web Resources:

This press release
   In English: http://www.w3.org/2005/11/ruleswg-pressrelease.html.en
   In French : http://www.w3.org/2005/11/ruleswg-pressrelease.html.fr
   In Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2005/11/ruleswg-pressrelease.html.ja

The W3C Rule Interchange Format homepage
   http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/

The W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group homepage
   http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/

The W3C Semantic Web Activity homepage
   http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 7 November 2005 -- Today, the World Wide Web 
Consortium announced the formation of the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) 
Working Group with a mission to produce a standard means for exchanging 
rules on the Web. Rules constitute a key element of the Semantic Web 
vision, allowing integration, derivation, and transformation of data 
from multiple sources in a distributed, transparent and scalable manner.

"After years of industry and research work in rule languages, I'm 
pleased to see W3C Members working to develop a Web-based rules 
standard," explained Tim Berners-Lee, Director of the W3C. "The bringing 
together of business rules vendors, user companies, rule language 
designers and Semantic Web developers to create a rules standard is an 
important step in achieving the full power of the Semantic Web."

Rules Standard Adds Power to Business Applications

Today's announcement marks a key step in bringing together the leaders 
in business rules development, Semantic Web developers, and end users in 
an effort to identify requirements for a common Rule Interchange Format 
for the Web. A Rule Interchange Format will provide a way to represent 
established and new rule languages, allowing rules written for one 
application to be published, shared, merged and re-used in other 
applications and by other rule engines. This in turn facilitates the 
integration of individual, departmental, corporate, and public data 
sources and the ability to draw new conclusions. A Rule Interchange 
Format will, for example, help businesses find new customers, doctors 
validate prescriptions, and banks process loan applications. With a Rule 
Interchange Format for the Web, conventional rules technology will be 
enhanced not only by the usual economies of standardization, but 
specifically by what the Semantic Web infrastructure provides: the 
ability to exchange and merge rules from different sources.

Business Rules Become More Powerful When Coupled with Web Architecture

Linking the vision of the dynamic business rules marketplace with Web 
architecture began with the successful April 2005 W3C Workshop on Rule 
Languages for Interoperability, which brought together over sixty 
industry and research organizations working in this area including ILOG, 
Fair Isaac, Pegasystems, IBM, Oracle, Agfa, GM and others. The new W3C 
RIF Working Group is designed to balance the needs of a diverse 
community and produce a core rule language plus extensions which 
together allow rules to be translated between rule languages and thus 
transferred between rule systems.

More information is available from the W3C Rule Interchange Format home 
page.

Major funding for this work was provided by DARPA, as part of the DAML 
program, under MIT/AFRL cooperative agreement number F30602-00-2-0593.

Contact Americas, Australia --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe, Africa, Middle-East --
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170


About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing 
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run 
by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT 
CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and 
Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in 
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of 
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and 
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new 
technology. More than 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. 
For more information see http://www.w3.org/


-- 


World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Janet Daly, Global Communications Officer
MIT/CSAIL, Building 32-G518
32 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139

voice: 617.253.5884
fax:   617.258.5999
http://www.w3.org/
janet@w3.org

Received on Monday, 7 November 2005 14:32:21 UTC