Rule Interchange Format: The Framework

The Rule Interchange Format (RIF) activity within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) aims to develop a standard for exchanging rules among disparate systems, especially on the Semantic Web. The need for rule-based information processing on the Web has been felt ever since RDF was introduced in the late 90's. As ontology development picked up pace this decade and as the limitations of OWL became apparent, rules were firmly put back on the agenda. RIF is therefore a major opportunity for the introduction of rule based technologies into the main stream of knowledge representation and information processing on the Web.