Specifying and Executing Application Behaviour with Condition-Request Rules

The paper outlines a method for writing applications operating on components that are linked in a decentralised fashion. Our aspiration is to simplify data integration and system interoperation at scale. In projects we have routinely encountered obstacles for integration and interoperation due to architectural mismatches along several dimensions: network protocol, data format and data semantics. We argue for a uniform interface to components based on a combination of the Representational State Transfer architectural style and the Linked Data principles, as only an uncluttered component interface allows for a concise specification of application behaviour. To specify applications, we present the syntax of a small language consisting of condition-request rules and sketch an operational semantics for the language based on an agent architecture with a sense-act cycle.