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    ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ON  REASONING ABOUT ACTIONS AND CHANGE        
Issue 97035             Editor: Erik Sandewall            27.12.1997
Back issues available at http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/etai/actions/njl/
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                    *********  TODAY  *********

The present Newsletter issue contains questions/comments by Wolfgang
Nejdl to Michael Thielscher re his ETAI article. Some of Wolfgang's
points actually coincide with points that were made by Marie-Odile Cordier
and which were included in the previous Newsletter issue (23.12).
In fact, the two contributions must have been written concurrently;
Wolfgang's mail did also arrive on the 23, but we don't send out more 
than one Newsletter a day, and Christmas has occurred in-between.



              *********  ETAI PUBLICATIONS  *********

            ---  DISCUSSION ABOUT RECEIVED ARTICLES  ---

The following debate contributions (questions, answers, or comments)
have been received for articles that have been received by the ETAI and
which are presently subject of discussion. To see the full context,
for example, to see the question that a given answer refers to, or to
see the article itself or its summary, please use the web-page version 
of this Newsletter.

        ========================================================
        |  AUTHOR: Michael Thielscher
        |  TITLE:  A Theory of Dynamic Diagnosis
        ========================================================

--------------------------------------------------------
|  FROM: Wolfgang Nejdl
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One basic remark about the title and intention of your paper:

When I first read your paper, I had some difficulties in connecting
your work to the usual diagnosis literature, as you basically refer
only to papers about reasoning about action and change (which is ok,
considering the content, but should be changed, considering the
title).  Also, the current title is somewhat misleading, as the term
"dynamic diagnosis" in the diagnosis community is usually reserved for
systems which monitor and diagnose continuous and/or time-varying
systems. I would have suggested something like "diagnosis and actions"
or similar within the title.

Anyway, here are some more specific questions, which came into my
mind, while I was trying to comprehend your approach.

1. It seems to me, that one main problem (chapter 2) you are
considering are dependent failures like "ab(c1) implies ab(c2)", which
are usually neglected in many papers.  Could you elaborate more on the
advantages of your formalism when these dependent failures are not
present? In such a case, what exactly do you gain by including
explicit causal relationships (considering that most diagnosis systems
use just ordinary state constraints)?

2. A second thread which seems to emerge in chapter 4 is the
integration of test actions. Have you thought about which test actions
one should take, or is this only a side issue in this chapter?

3. Also, could you comment some more about the relationship of your
approach to the one of Sheila McIlraith?

Best regards,

Wolfgang Nejdl

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