On Monday 06 August 2007 19:23, Mills Davis wrote:
Thanks Randall.
Yes. Most of what we have been working with are separate description
logic inference engines, rules engines, and SQL engines linked to
separate applications, so we find ourselves talking about hybrid
reasoning solution. So, by tooling (and independent of performance
considerations), I'm envisioning software solutions that would enable
us to bring these different formalisms, or subsets of FOL under one
environment.
As a very generic statement, that could characterize our approach, as
well. Surely the use of relational database content (interpreted as
ground assertions) and description logic are both subsets of FOL that
interest us.
My understanding is that your support of CLIF lets you
express whatever it is that the originating applications are working
with in a CL interchangeable way.
I think CL interchangeability is ill-defined, at this point. Just as
reliable interoperability of the TCP / IP protocols took several years
to iron out, I expect the same to be true of Common Logic. The
specification is (apparently intentionally) loose and minimally
specified, and unless it is tightened up, there will be, at best,
bilateral interchangeability of content. By that I mean that pairs of
particular CL applications will be able to successfully exchange CL
content (probably by prior arrangement), but generic, arbitrary
exchange is unlikely to succeed unless the standard is made more
explicit.
So, it sounds like you have a full
CL inference engine. Also, are you implementing the IKL extensions?
We have full, first-order logic with identity (often called "equality")
and an ever-growing complement of specialized optimizations, some of
which are generic, in the sense that they do not compromise
completeness of first-order predicate calculus, and others that are
only valid for restrictions or special cases of FOL (e.g., the unique
names assumption).
IKL interests us, to be sure. We are studying it and contemplate
implementing it.
Randall Schulz
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