RIF Standard

A RIF Standard is a semantic rule language that allows the exchange of logic rules between systems.

AKA: RIF, Rule Interchange Format.
Context:
- It ranges from being a RIF-BLD (syntax and semantics) to being a RIF-FLD (logic dialects).
- …
Counter-Example(s):
- OWL Standard.
- Common Logic.
- SWRL.
See: Language Standard, Web Ontology Language, RuleML, Datalog.

References

(Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_Interchange_Format
- The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) is a W3C Recommendation. RIF is part of the infrastructure for the semantic web, along with (principally) SPARQL, RDF and OWL. Although originally envisioned by many as a "rules layer" for the semantic web, in reality the design of RIF is based on the observation that there are many "rules languages" in existence, and what is needed is to exchange rules between them.^[1]

RIF includes three dialects, a Core dialect which is extended into a Basic Logic Dialect (BLD) and Production Rule Dialect (PRD).^[2]

(W3C-TR,2013) ⇒ Retrieved from W3C technical reports at http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-rif-overview-20130205/
- This document, developed by the Rule Interchange Format (RIF) Working Group, specifies the Basic Logic Dialect, RIF-BLD, a format that allows logic rules to be exchanged between rule systems. The RIF-BLD presentation syntax and semantics are specified both directly and as specializations of the RIF Framework for Logic Dialects, or RIF-FLD. The XML serialization syntax of RIF-BLD is specified via a mapping from the presentation syntax. A normative XML schema is also provided.

(Obitko, 2007) ⇒ Marek Obitko. (2007). “Translations Between Ontologies in Multi-agent Systems - Ontology Operations].” PhD Thesis, Czech Technical University http://www.obitko.com/tutorials/ontologies-semantic-web/semantic-web-architecture.html
- To allow standardized description of taxonomies and other ontological constructs, a RDF Schema (RDFS) was created together with its formal semantics within RDF. RDFS can be used to describe taxonomies of classes and properties and use them to create lightweight ontologies.
  More detailed ontologies can be created with Web Ontology Language OWL. The OWL is a language derived from description logics, and offers more constructs over RDFS. It is syntactically embedded into RDF, so like RDFS, it provides additional standardized vocabulary. OWL comes in three species - OWL Lite for taxonomies and simple constrains, OWL DL for full description logic support, and OWL Full for maximum expressiveness and syntactic freedom of RDF. Since OWL is based on description logic, it is not surprising that a formal semantics is defined for this language.
  RDFS and OWL have semantics defined and this semantics can be used for reasoning within ontologies and knowledge bases described using these languages. To provide rules beyond the constructs available from these languages, rule languages are being standardized for the semantic web as well. Two standards are emerging - RIF and SWRL.