Re: Preconditions /effects vs Preconditions/Postconditions

Monika Solanki wrote:

> I understand that prescribing the fact about how to use, includes 
> identifying all the details like IOPEs as well, or am I missing 
> something. I am not sure what is meant by other uses. 

I'm  picturing a web service providing a purely procedural model of how 
to use it: Perform these steps and you will have bought a computer from 
us.  "Us," let us suppose, is hardware.com, the dominant retail outlet.  
Suppose what the user wants is to find a computer at a bargain price, 
defined as "less than what hardware.com charges."  Then there may be a 
way to use hardware.com's service and other services to accomplish this 
goal, but hardware.com has no motivation to broadcast it. 

The optimal model of  their service,  from a planner's standpoint, is a 
detailed description of  IOPEs for each message you can send them, 
because that would allow the planner to compose those messages in 
arbitrary ways with each other and with messages to other web services.  
For such a model to be produced and kept up to date, someone must have 
an economic incentive to do it.

Received on Tuesday, 16 September 2003 12:55:47 UTC