constraints use cases/stories? [was: a first tilt at the strawman]

Going back a bit to 8 Jun 2005...
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rule-workshop-discuss/2005Jun/0003.html
where Anthony Finkelstein wrote...

> I do not believe that the answer to rule 
> language interoperability is to create, as is implied in the 
> strawman, a metalanguage. I think there are simpler and more 
> pragmatic ways forward that have to do with standardising the ways in 
> which rules are referenced, assembled into rule sets and made 
> available to reasoning engines. These should be our first point of 
> attack if we are genuinely concerned with interoperability. Almost 
> inevitably, given the demanding technical issues, a logical 
> metalanguage risks either academic abstraction or excluding major 
> parts of the picture.
>
> In any event I am going to put a strong plea, as I did at the 
> workshop to ensure that the scope of the initiative includes the 
> handling of constraints an important sub class of rules.

I'm not sure I know what "handling constraints" means.

I'm sure there are technical definitions, but actually what
I'm more curious about just now is to hear a story a la...

Scarlet and Bob work in [an accounting firm or whatever], and they
[have some problem]; before W3C standardized "handling
constriants" [life sucked in the following ways...].
Now that there's a W3C standard for handling constraints,
[life is good in the following ways...].

Bonus points for stories that involve anarchic scalability
(cf http://esw.w3.org/topic/AnarchicScalability ),
unintended reuse, and other web-like characteristics.

As a footnote to the story, a pointer to your favorite
technical definition of "constraint" and related terms
might help, Anthony.

By way of example/precedent, I think the OWL use cases were
a big success. http://www.w3.org/TR/webont-req/
  * 2.1 Web portal
      * 2.2 Multimedia collections
      * 2.3 Corporate web site management
      * 2.4 Design documentation
      * 2.5 Agents and services
      * 2.6 Ubiquitous computing


And I'm pretty happy with the way the RDF Data Access
use cases and requirements have established a
shared vocabulary and motivated the technology.

http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-dawg-uc/

  * 2.1 Finding an Email Address
      * 2.2 Finding Information about Motorcycle Parts
      * 2.3 Finding Unknown Media Objects
      * 2.4 Monitoring News Events
      * 2.5 Avoiding Traffic Jams
      * 2.6 Discovering What People Say about News Stories
      * 2.7 Exploring the Neighborhood
      * 2.8 Sharing Vacation Photos with a Friend
      * 2.9 Finding Input and Output Documents for Test Cases
      * 2.10 Discovering Learning Resources
      * 2.11 Finding Out New Things About People
      * 2.12 Browsing Patient Records
      * 2.13 Finding Disjunct Conditions
      * 2.14 Finding Film Soundtracks
      * 2.15 Managing Personal Identities
      * 2.16 Customizing Content Delivery
      * 2.17 Building Ontology Tools
      * 2.18 Working with Enterprise Web Services
      * 2.19 Building Tables of Contents

-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
D3C2 887B 0F92 6005 C541  0875 0F91 96DE 6E52 C29E

Received on Thursday, 7 July 2005 17:24:27 UTC