- From: Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 09:29:09 -0500
- To: Damian Steer <pldms@mac.com>
- Cc: www-rdf-rules@w3.org
> I guess my question is: is the rdf rule WG going to produce simply a
> means to express rules, or something more like a rules programming
> language (a la prolog, N3)?
Quite seriously: what's the difference?
And where there is a difference, which path is more important to the
semantic web?
My answer: I think the language needs (unlike Prolog, but like N3) to
be (1) monotonic and (2) have ordering of the rules be not
significant, so that rule sets can be arbitrarily combined while
maintaining their truth value. There may be places where these
requirements can be waived (especially for negation-as-failure
(prolog's normal "not"), but they'll have to be circumscribed (in the
general not necessarily technical sense of that word). How and when
they can be waived should be (IMO) out of scope for this WG. Phase 2.
Maybe the WG should be told to keep a path open to that stage....
-- sandro
Received on Wednesday, 12 November 2003 09:26:34 UTC