RIF Core

W3C Editor's Draft 2125 November 2008

This version:

http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-core-20081121/http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-core-20081125/

Latest editor's draft:

http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/rif-core/

Previous version:

http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-core-20080922/http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-core-20081121/ (color-coded diff)

Editors:

Harold Boley, National Research Council Canada

Gary Hallmark, Oracle Corporation

Michael Kifer, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA

Adrian Paschke, Free University Berlin

Axel Polleres, DERI

Dave Reynolds, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol UK

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Copyright © 2008 W3C^® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.

Abstract

Status of this Document

May Be Superseded

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

Set of Documents

This document is being published as one of a set of 5 documents:

1. RIF Use Cases and Requirements
2. RIF Core (this document)
3. RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0
4. RIF Production Rule Dialect
5. RIF (Rule Interchange Format) Test Cases

Please Comment By 2008-11-252008-11-28

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group seeks public feedback on these Working Drafts. Please send your comments to public-rif-comments@w3.org (public archive). If possible, please offer specific changes to the text that would address your concern. You may also wish to check the Wiki Version of this document for internal-review comments and changes being drafted which may address your concerns.

No Endorsement

Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.

Patents

This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.

This specification develops RIF-Core (the Core of the Rule Interchange Format). From a theoretical perspective, RIF-Core corresponds to the language of definite Horn rules without function symbols ('Datalog') and a standard first-order semantics. RIF-Core thus is a subset of RIF-BLD [RIF-BLD]. At the same time, RIF-Core is a language of production rules permitting only assert actions. RIF-Core thus also is a subset of RIF-PRD [RIF-PRD]. Moreover, RIF-Core is based on the built-ins of RIF-DTB 1.0 [RIF-DTB]. The common subset of RIF-BLD and RIF-PRD is specified based on RIF-DTB 1.0.

Syntactically, RIF-Core has a number of Datalog extensions to support features such as objects and frames as in F-logic [KLW95], internationalized resource identifiers (or IRIs, defined by [RFC-3987]) as identifiers for concepts, and XML Schema datatypes [XML-SCHEMA2]. In addition, RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility [RIF-RDF+OWL] defines the syntax and semantics of integrated RIF-Core/RDF and RIF-Core/OWL languages. These features make RIF-Core a Web-aware language. However, it should be kept in mind that RIF is designed to enable interoperability among rule languages in general, and its uses are not limited to the Web.

RIF-Core is defined as a specialization of RIF-BLD (hence of [RIF-FLD] which is part of the RIF extensibility framework). It is a syntactic subset of RIF-BLD, so that a well-formed RIF-Core formula (including documents and condition formula) is also a well-formed RIF-BLD formula. The semantics of RIF-Core is defined to be identical to that of RIF-BLD.

RIF-Core is also a syntactic subset of RIF-PRD. It is intended that a RIF-PRD consumer can treat a RIF-Core ruleset as if it were a RIF-PRD rule set and it would conform to the normative RIF-Core first order semantics. However, due to the presence of builtin functions and predicates there are RIF-Core rulesets which are unsafe and do not reach a stable fixed-point under RIF-PRD semantics. We define the conformance to RIF-Core so as to only require conformance over a safe subset of rules, in this way we permit RIF-PRD processors to be safely conformant while allowing RIF-Core documents to contain unsafe rules. Producers of RIF-Core who require maximum interchange are advised to restrict themselves to safe rules. These notions of safeness and safe conformance are defined formally in section 5 Conformance and Safety.

To give a preview, here is a simple complete RIF-Core example deriving a ternary relation from its inverse.

Example 1 (An introductory RIF-Core example).

A rule can be written in English to derive the buy relationships (rather than store them) from the sell relationships that are stored as facts (e.g., as exemplified by the English statement below):

• A buyer buys an item from a seller if the seller sells the item to the buyer.
• John sells LeRif to Mary.

The fact Mary buys LeRif from John can be logically derived by a modus ponens argument. Assuming Web IRIs for the predicates buy and sell, as well as for the individuals John, Mary, and LeRif, the above English text can be represented in RIF-Core Presentation Syntax as follows.

Document(
  Prefix(cpt http://example.com/concepts#)
  Prefix(ppl http://example.com/people#)
  Prefix(bks http://example.com/books#)

  Group
  (
     Forall?Buyer?Item?SellerForall ?Buyer ?Item ?Seller (
         cpt:buy(?Buyer?Item?Seller):- cpt:sell(?Seller?Item?Buyer)cpt:buy(?Buyer ?Item ?Seller) :- cpt:sell(?Seller ?Item ?Buyer)
    )
 
    cpt:sell(ppl:John bks:LeRif ppl:Mary)
  )
)

For the interchange of such rule (and fact) documents, an equivalent RIF-Core XML Syntax is given in this specification. To formalize their meaning, a RIF-Core Semantics is specified.

RIF-BLD [RIF-BLD] specifies a presentation syntax and an XML syntax. The presentation syntax is normative, but is not intended to be a concrete syntax. Since RIF is an interchange format, it uses XML as its concrete syntax.

RIF-Core is a syntactic subset of RIF-BLD and in this section we define it as a restriction on the RIF-BLD syntax.

• each symbol in Const can be either an individual orindividual, a (non-external) predicate symbol, an external function, or an external predicate
• symbolif a symbol occurs in a position of a predicate or (external) function of some arity then it cannot occur elsewhere in the formula with some other arity
• if a predicate symbol occurs as a predicate in an external formula then it does not occur elsewhere as a non-external predicate.for every occurrence of External(t), t must be an instance of the coherent set of external schemas (Section Schemas for Externally Defined Terms of [RIF-DTB]) associated with the language of RIF-CORE.

For rif:local symbols, the first three of the above clauses apply only within the scope of a single document. That is, two different occurrences of the same rif:local symbol in different documents may have different arities, may occur both as predicates and individuals, etc. For other symbols, the above restrictions apply not only to the document that contains the particular occurrence of the symbol, but also to all documents that are imported by that document.

  Document       ::= ::= IRIMETA? 'Document' '(' Base? Prefix* Import* Group? ')'
  Base           ::= ::= 'Base' '(' IRI ')'
  Prefix         ::= ::= 'Prefix' '(' Name IRI ')'
  Import         ::= ::= IRIMETA? 'Import' '(' IRICONST PROFILE? ')'
  Group          ::= ::= IRIMETA? 'Group' '(' (RULE | Group)* ')'
  RULE           ::= ::= (IRIMETA? 'Forall' Var+ '(' CLAUSE ')') | CLAUSE
  CLAUSE         ::= ::= Implies | ATOMIC
  Implies        ::= ::= IRIMETA? ATOMIC  ':-' FORMULA
  PROFILE        ::= ::= TERM

  FORMULA        ::= ::= IRIMETA? 'And' '(' FORMULA* ')' |
                     IRIMETA? 'Or' '(' FORMULA* ')' |
                     IRIMETA? 'Exists' Var+ '(' FORMULA ')' |
                     ATOMIC |
                     IRIMETA? Equal |
                     IRIMETA? Member |
                     IRIMETA? 'External' '(' Atom ')'
  ATOMIC         ::= ::= IRIMETA? (Atom | Frame )
  Atom           ::= ::= UNITERM
  UNITERM        ::= ::= Const '(' (TERM* ')'
  Equal          ::= ::= TERM '=' ( TERM | 'External' '(' FUNC ')' )
  FUNC           ::= Const '(' (GENERAL_TERM* ')'
  GENERAL_TERM   ::= IRIMETA? (Const | Var | FUNC)
  Member         ::= ::= TERM '#' TERM
  Frame          ::= ::= TERM '[' (TERM '->' TERM)* ']'
  TERM           ::= ::= IRIMETA? (Const |  Var | 'External' '(' Atom ')' )Var)
  Const          ::= ::= '"' UNICODESTRING '"^^' SYMSPACE | CONSTSHORT
  Name           ::= ::= UNICODESTRING
  Var            ::= ::= '?' UNICODESTRING
  SYMSPACE       ::= ::= ANGLEBRACKIRI | CURIE

  IRIMETA        ::= ::= '(*' IRICONST? (Frame | 'And' '(' Frame* ')')? '*)'

The RIF-Core Condition Language represents formulas that can be used in the premises of RIF-Core rules (also called rule bodies). The EBNF grammar for a superset of the RIF-Core condition language is shown in the above conditions part.

This is a subset of the EBNF for the RIF-BLD condition language specified in RIF-BLD conditions part reflecting the syntax restrictions on RIF-Core described normatively in sections 2.1 through 2.5 above.

The Example 2 from the RIF-BLD document illustrates a RIF-Core condition.

The presentation syntax for RIF-Core rules is based on the syntax in Section EBNF for RIF-Core Condition Language with the productions shown in the above rules part.

Again, this is a subset of the EBNF for the RIF-BLD rule language specified in RIF-BLD rules part reflecting the syntax restrictions on RIF-Core described normatively in sections 2.1 through 2.5 above.

Example 3 from the RIF-BLD document illustrates a set of RIF-Core rules and Example 4 a RIF-Core document that contains an annotated group formula. In contrast, the Example 6 from the RIF-BLD document shows a formula that is not in RIF-Core because it includes terms with named arguments, which are not allowed in this dialect.

The XML syntax of RIF-Core is a subset of the XML syntax of RIF-BLD. All XML tags of RIF-BLD (except Subclass, sub and super) are supported, but the XML schema of RIF-Core restricts their context with respect to what is allowed by the XML Schema of RIF-BLD. The semantics of the XML syntax for RIF-Core is defined through the same RIF-BLD XML-to-presentation syntax mapping.

ISSUE: sub might not be allowed. This dependsEditor's Note: As noted earlier the status of membership (#) and subclass (##) formulas are under discussion in the working group. Depending on the resolution of thethis issue regardingthe tags relating to subclass relationship.may be reinstated or those relating to membership may be removed.

Example 5, "A RIF condition and its XML serialization," in the RIF-BLD document illustrates XML serialization for a RIF-Core condition formula. XML serialization of a complete RIF-Core document appears in the RIF-BLD document as Example 7.

All RIF-Core documents are syntactically also RIF-PRD documents. However, some formulas may be unsafe and cannot be executed under the RIF-PRD operational semantics. Thus, in order to allow production rule systems and logic programming systems to interchange rulesets via RIF-Core, we define a safe subset of RIF-Core and the notion of safely conformant RIF-Core consumers or producers. A safely conformant RIF-Core consumer can reject non-safe RIF-Core documents even if they are otherwise well-formed. The notion of (general) conformance allows RIF-Core producers and consumers to produce and consume unsafe rulesets. For safe Core documents, the logical semantics of RIF-BLD and operational fixed-point semantics of RIF-PRD coincide. In the absence of the data types and built-ins, this follows from [Vianu97].

Let Τ be a set of datatypes that includes the datatypes specified in [RIF-DTB], and suppose Ε is a set of external predicates and functions that includes the built-ins listed in [RIF-DTB]. We say that a formula φ is a Core _,Τ,Ε formula iff

• it is a well-formed Core formula,
• all the datatypes used in φ are in ,Τ, and
• all the externally defined functions and predicates used in φ are in .Ε.

A RIF processor is a conformant Core _,Τ,Ε consumer iff it implements a semantics-preserving mapping from the set of all Core _,Τ,Ε formulas to the language L of the processor.

A RIF processor is a conformant Core _,Τ,Ε producer iff it implements a semantics-preserving mapping from a subset of the language L of the processor to a set of Core _,Τ,Ε formulas.

A conformant document is one that conforms to all the syntactic constraints of RIF-Core, including ones that cannot be checked by an XML Schema validator.

In addition:

• Conformant Core producers and consumers are required to support only the entailments of closed RIF condition formulas.

• A conformant RIF-Core consumer is a conformant Core _,Τ,Ε consumer in which Τ consists only of the datatypes and Ε consists only of the externally defined functions and predicates that are required by RIF-Core. These datatypes and externally defined terms (called built-ins) are specified in [RIF-DTB]. A conformant RIF-Core consumer must reject all inputs that do not match the syntax of Core. If it implements extensions, it may do so under user control -- having a "strict Core" mode and a "run-with-extensions" mode.
• A conformant Core producer is a conformant Core _,Τ,Ε producer, which produces documents that include only the datatypes and externals that are required by Core.

• Safely conformant. A Core consumer or producer is safely conformant if it supports only entailmententailments of safethe form φ |=_Core ψ, where ψ is a closed RIF condition formulas.formula and φ is a safe formula. Since such a consumer/producer might not preserve entailment ofover unsafe conditionformulas, it might not be Core-conformant in the more general sense defined earlier. Thus, safe conformance is a weaker requirement than (general) conformance.

This normative section describes RIF-Core by specializing RIF-PRD . The reader is assumed to be familiar with RIF-PRD as described in [RIF-PRD]. The reader who is not interested in how RIF-Core is derived from PRD can skip this section.

RIF-PRD and RIF-BLD share essentially the same presentation syntax and XML syntax.

The differences between the two dialects are summarized below:

• RIF-BLD allows logic and externally specified, fixed-interpretation functions as TERM, whereas RIF-PRD accepts only externally specified functions;
• RIF-BLD allows ATOMIC or And(ATOMIC*) in rule conclusions, whereas RIF-PRD allows ACTION or Do(ACTION*). In RIF-PRD it is not possible to conclude equality or class membership.
• RIF-PRD allows Not(FORMULA), which RIF-BLD does not accept;
• RIF-PRD defines ASSERT and Retract actions that are not allowed in RIF-BLD.
• RIF-PRD introduces a pattern matching constraint in Forall

For context, the table below lists the constructs which are in the maximal common subset (intersection) of BLD and PRD, marks certain rows as not being in Core, or annotates them w.r.t. restrictions making them part of Core.

[Const | Var | External]

'"' UNICODESTRING '"^^' SYMSPACE

<Const type=xsd:anyURI [xml:lang=xsd:language]? >
   Any Unicode string
</Const>

'?' Any Unicode string

<Var>
   Any Unicode string
</Var>

'External' '(' Expr ')'

<External>
   <content>
      Expr
   </content>
</External>

[Atom | Frame]

Const '(' (TERM* ')'

<Atom>
   <op> Const </op>
    <args rif:ordered="yes"> TERM* </args>?
</Atom>

TERM = TERM

<Equal>
   <left> TERM </left>
   <right> TERM </right>
</Equal>

TERM # TERM

<Member>
   <instance> TERM </instance>
   <class> TERM </class>
</Member>

TERM ' [ ' (TERM ' -> ' TERM)* ' ] '

<Frame>
   <object> TERM </object>
   <slot rif:ordered="yes"> TERM TERM </slot>*
</Frame>

[ATOMIC | External | And | Or | Exists]

'External '(' [Atom | Frame] ')'

<External>
   <content>
      [ Atom | Frame ]
   </content>
</External>

'And' '(' FORMULA* ')'

<And>
   <formula> FORMULA </formula>*
</And>

'Or' '(' FORMULA* ')'

<Or>
   <formula> FORMULA </formula>*
</Or>

'Exists' Var+ '(' FORMULA ')'

<Exists>
   <declare> Var </declare>+
   <formula> FORMULA </formula>
</Exists>

[ Forall | Implies | ATOMIC ]

' Forall ' Var+ ' ( ' [Implies | ATOMIC] ' ) '

<Forall>
   <declare> Var </declare>+
   <formula>
       [Implies | ATOMIC ] 
   </formula>
</Forall>

ATOMIC '=>' FORMULA

<Implies>
   <if> FORMULA </if>
   <then>
      ATOMIC
   </then>
</Implies>

METADATA? 'Group' '(' ([RULE | Group])* ')'

<Group>
   <sentence> [ RULE | Group ] </sentence>*
</Group>

METADATA? 'Document' '(' Group? ')'

<Document>
  <payload> Group </payload>?
</Document>

'(*' Const? (Frame | 'And' '(' Frame* ')')? '*)'

<AnyClassTag>
   <id> Const </declare>?
   <meta>
      [ Frame 
        |
        <And>
           <formula> Frame </formula>
        </And>
       ]
   </meta>?
   other content of AnyClassTag
</AnyClassTag>

[RDF-CONCEPTS]

Resource Description Framework (RDF): Concepts and Abstract Syntax, Klyne G., Carroll J. (Editors), W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-concepts-20040210/. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/.

[RFC-3066]

RFC 3066 - Tags for the Identification of Languages, H. Alvestrand, IETF, January 2001. This document is http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc3066.txt.

[RFC-3987]

RFC 3987 - Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs), M. Duerst and M. Suignard, IETF, January 2005. This document is http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3987.txt.

[RIF-BLD]

RIF Basic Logic Dialect, Boley H. and Kifer M. (Editors), W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group Draft. Latest Version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/BLD.

[RIF-DTB]

RIF Datatypes and Built-Ins 1.0 Axel Polleres, Harold Boley, Michael Kifer, eds. W3C Editor's Draft, 2125 November 2008, http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-dtb-20081121/http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-dtb-20081125/. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/rif-dtb/.

[RIF-FLD]

RIF Framework for Logic Dialects, Boley H. and Kifer M. (Editors), W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group Draft. Latest Version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/FLD.

[RIF-RDF+OWL]

RIF RDF and OWL Compatibility, de Bruijn, J. (Editor), W3C Rule Interchange Format Working Group Draft. Latest Version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wiki/SWC.

[RIF-PRD]

RIF Production Rule Dialect Christian de Sainte Marie, Adrian Paschke, Gary Hallmark, eds. W3C Editor's Draft, 2125 November 2008, http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-prd-20081121/http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-prd-20081125/. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/rif-prd/.

[XML1.0]

Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition), W3C Recommendation, World Wide Web Consortium, 16 August 2006, edited in place 29 September 2006. This version is http://www.w3.org/TR/2006/REC-xml-20060816/.

[XML-Base]

XML Base, W3C Recommendation, World Wide Web Consortium, 27 June 2001. This version is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlbase-20010627/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/.

[XML-SCHEMA2]

XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes, W3C Recommendation, World Wide Web Consortium, 2 May 2001. This version is http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-2-20010502/. The latest version is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/.

[ANF01]

Normal Form Conventions for XML Representations of Structured Data, Henry S. Thompson. October 2001. Available at http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~ht/normalForms.html.

[CL73]

Symbolic Logic and Mechanical Theorem Proving, C.L. Chang and R.C.T. Lee. Academic Press, 1973.

[CURIE]

CURIE Syntax 1.0: A syntax for expressing Compact URIs, Mark Birbeck, Shane McCarron. W3C Working Draft 2 April 2008. Available at http://www.w3.org/TR/curie/.

[Enderton01]

A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, Second Edition, H. B. Enderton. Academic Press, 2001.

[KLW95]

Logical foundations of object-oriented and frame-based languages, M. Kifer, G. Lausen, J. Wu. Journal of ACM, July 1995, pp. 741--843.

[Mendelson97]

Introduction to Mathematical Logic, Fourth Edition, E. Mendelson. Chapman & Hall, 1997.

[OWL-Reference]

OWL Web Ontology Language Reference, M. Dean, G. Schreiber, Editors, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/.

[RDFSYN04]

RDF/XML Syntax Specification (Revised), Dave Beckett, Editor, W3C Recommendation, 10 February 2004, http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-rdf-syntax-grammar-20040210/. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/.

[RIF-UCR]

RIF Use Cases and Requirements Adrian Paschke, David Hirtle, Allen Ginsberg, Paula-Lavinia Patranjan, Frank McCabe, eds. W3C Editor's Draft, 2125 November 2008, http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-ucr-20081121/http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/ED-rif-ucr-20081125/. Latest version available at http://www.w3.org/2005/rules/wg/draft/rif-ucr/.

[TRT03]

Object-Oriented RuleML: User-Level Roles, URI-Grounded Clauses, and Order-Sorted Terms, H. Boley. Springer LNCS 2876, Oct. 2003, pp. 1-16. Preprint at http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/publications/nrc-46502_e.html.

[vEK76]

The semantics of predicate logic as a programming language, M. van Emden and R. Kowalski. Journal of the ACM 23 (1976), pp. 733-742.

[Vianu97]

Rule-Based Languages, Vianu V.. Annals of Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence 19 (1997), pp. 215-259.

XML schemas for the RIF-Core sublanguages are defined below and are also available here with additional examples.

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
 

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>