ruleML - benefits/bad points?

Question

Hi guys, I'm currently looking into ruleML and I was wondering if maybe someone could give me a short list of advantages and disadvantages about it?

Thanks

Answer 1

RuleML is a generalisation of existing ontology languages and query systems for the semantics web, such as OWL-DL, the toolset around RDF, and a Prolog-like system based on first-order logic.

There's nice theory behind it, and substantial backing for it, but I'd call it an unproven approach. In logic, more so than with programming languages, more general does not mean better. You generally want to avoid any potentially non-terminating properties in the description of your ontology, keeping ontology description from the potentially nonterminating queries you might want to perform on the ontology. My concern with RuleML is that, while the designers certainly understand the issue, the actual design may undermine this distinction between query and ontology. Approaches based on description logic, such as OWL-DL, force the distinction on you.