[rules-dev] RIF releases spec for production rules

[Michael Neale]

For anyone interested in rules standards:

http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/PRD

Before your eyes glaze over, it has some interesting points,
particularly section 1.3 (Running example). - note the easier to read
presentation syntax (which I think it means to be totally compatible
with the XML at the AST level).

Anyone interested in implementing some support for PRD part of RIF,
either via XML or via a grammar for the presentation syntax (not sure
if converters already exist to go from presentation syntax to XML). We
could have a competition to see who does it ;)

Standards are interesting, although often impractical in practice.
However, they are often important for people as it increases the
comfort level with technology (even if they know that interchange or
migration may not be trivial or smooth, at least its not total lock in
from their point of view). For example, look at SQL. At a low level
its radically different between databases, yet people still feel
comfortable using it.

In terms of how we could implement it:

a) parse to our desc/AST
b) parse to X, dump to DRL

Obviously A is better, but its (probably) more work, and harder to
debug as you are building it.

Thoughts?



-- 
Michael D Neale
home: www.michaelneale.net
blog: michaelneale.blogspot.com