The URML Effort

URML is an effort lead by  Said Tabet ,  Prabhakar Bhogaraju and  David Ash. Our goal is to leverage our AI experience and foster the development of standards for rule markup using  XML .

Why is XML important for Rule Based Systems?

One of the key advantages of XML is that it allows developers, through the use of DTD files, to design their own languages for solving different problems.  At the same time, one of the biggest challenges to using rule-based AI solutions is that it forces the developer to cast the problem within particular, AI-specific, languages which are awkward to interface with the rest of the system.  XML changes all that by allowing the development of particular languages suited to particular AI problems and allows a seamless interface with the rule engine. The input and output, and even the rules themselves, from an AI application can be given as XML files allowing the software engineer to avoid having to invest considerable time and effort in building complex conversion procedures.  As the problem to be solved changes, the developer can change the language used to solve the problem and the interface is updated automatically.

Publications

• August 2000:  Using XML as a Language Interface for AI Applications presented at the PRICAI 2000 Conference .

The RuleML International Initiative

The  Rule Markup Initiative has taken initial steps towards defining a shared Rule Markup Language (RuleML), permitting both forward (bottom-up) and backward (top-down) rules in XML for deduction, rewriting, and further inferential-transformational tasks. The initiative started during PRICAI 2000, and is currently continuing through direct contacts and the Internet. A Rule Markup Workshop is planned in conjunction with the Third International Conference on Electronic Commerce, ICEC2001, in Vienna, Austria, in October 2001.

Current Development and Demos

A demo application will be available soon.