ISSUE-26: Replication of original rules after roundtripping to RIF [NOT CP]

ROUNDTRIPPING

Replication of original rules after roundtripping to RIF [NOT CP]

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Technical Design (multiple dialects/documents)

Raised by:

Christian de Sainte Marie

Opened on:

2006-12-12

Description:

(This issue was originally recorded in Sandro\'s email of 11/4/06, reporting on
the naming breakout at F2F4; his text is incorporated below.)

ROUNDTRIP ISSUE: When you round-trip a ruleset from a language L through
a RIF dialect in which L is covered, you are guaranteed to get back a ruleset
with identical semantics. But what about the aspects which are not part of
the semantics of the ruleset, such as variable names, whether a variable
is considered \"anonymous\", rule names, non-normal forms, and ordering in
languages where ordering affects performance but not semantics? What
should be the extent of replication of the original ruleset after
roundtripping?

Question: What non-semantic features of the original ruleset in a language L,
which has been translated to RIF, should be replicated when that ruleset is
translated back to the language L?

Possible features include:
1. original variable names
2. whether variable is \"anonymous\"
3. names of rules in L
4. non-normal forms used in L
5. original ordering of clauses in rules
There may be others. (Please add.)

What are some examples in which *not* replicating (1) - (4) when roundtripping
a ruleset would have an impact? Possible kinds of impact, e.g.,
(a) degrades efficiency of reasoning with the rule in some reasoners commonly
used with L;
(b) degrades accuracy of reasoning with the rule in some reasoners commonly
used with L;
(c) makes the rule harder for humans to read or recognize.
(Please add to this list.)

Impact on RIF: For features that should be replicated upon roundtripping:
(i) information about the features would have to be tracked in some way to
make it available to the translator;
(ii) in cases where there is a one-to-one mapping of a rule feature of L to
RIF, this would not be an issue; but otherwise, RIF would need some way to
represent the original non-semantic feature (as meta-information about the
rule), in order to preserve it for roundtripping.

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. Minutes from April 15, 2008, telecon (from adrian.paschke@biotec.tu-dresden.de on 2008-04-18)

Related notes:

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