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Responses

ISSUE-651

  • Original email: http://www.w3.org/mid/CABC+A3LHXh1r1BHqZR7eXqes8dRFKVg3A6oBB0F=mgUimL6r8g@mail.gmail.com
  • Tracker: https://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/651
  • Group Response
    • The commenter suggests that "instead of the wasDerivedFrom property, a dummy instance of Activity could always be used". The PROV model was designed to satisfy two different -- but complementary -- provenance user communities. "Entity-centric" users tend to focus on data and are less concerned about the activities involved. "Activity-centric" users tend use workflow environments where executions have relatively more prominence. Each is a valid perspective on the world, and it was important for the Working Group to provide constructs that would satisfy both. The commenter is correct that choosing only one of these perspectives would lead to a "more homogenous" design, it would exclude essentially half of the provenance community and would thus inhibit PROV's adoptability. From the example provided by the commenter, a modeler that is uninterested or simply unaware of the activity that derived one entity from another would be forced to clutter their model with "clutter".
      • In addition to the perspective that a modeler may wish to take, it is important to note that an activity having used an entity and generated another does not necessarily mean that the latter entity was derived from the former. So adding a dummy activity actually conveys less information than wasDerivedFrom.
    • The second comment "wasAttributedTo seems unnecessary to me, as we already can express the same with wasAssociatedWith from the Activity that led to the Entity." follows the same pattern as just described. "wasAttributedTo" allows "entity-centric" modelers to describe their entities without a "dummy" Activity, and "activity-centric" modelers may ascribe responsibility in the latter approach.
      • The commenter mentions the use of "cardinality constraints". The Working Group strived for an OWL ontology that would be lightweight enough for the entire semantic web community to adopt, which includes the Linked Data community that prefers minimal OWL constructs. This rationale is described in the appendix http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#owl-profile
    • The commenter suggests to rename prov:actedOnBehalfOf to prov:actsOnBehalfOf (s/ed/s/) "since it is independent of the activity". It is not the case that prov:actedOnBehalfOf applies "independent of the activity"; instead it applies "with the applicable activity unspecified". As with all of the qualifiable properties (e.g., prov:used; see http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#description-qualified-terms for more details), the binary relation does not provide the full details in which an agent acted on behalf of another. To provide (and find) the specifics about how, why, or when an agent acted on behalf of another, an instance of prov:Delegation qualification class is used to specify the context in which the agent acted on behalf of another (specifically, prov:hadActivity indicates the activity in which it was the case).
      • Further, tt is important that provenance describes the past, regardless of the level of detail expressed. actsOnBehalfOf would incorrectly imply that the delegation relationship holds _currently_. This might or might not be the case, but is not part of provenance, so not expressible in PROV.
  • References:
  • Changes to the document:
    • No changes made.
  • Original author's acknowledgement:

ISSUE-654

  • Original email: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-comments/2013Mar/0013.html
  • Tracker: http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/654
  • Group Response
    • This relates to the comments on the PROV-Primer document, not those on PROV-Overview.
    • For almost all suggestions and corrections in the mail, we agree that these are improvements that should be made (see specifics below).
    • For the suggestion of adding an RDFa example, while this would be a nice addition, we feel it would be too specific to a technology not covered anywhere else in the primer (or other PROV specs). It would be better provided as a separate document or part of the group's FAQ, and we will consider creating this, though preparing the specs will take priority.
  • References:
  • Changes to the document:
    • We have reduced the number of uses of "intuitive" to describe Section 2, and referred to it as "high-level" in the introduction contents summary.
    • We have added references to the sections being described in the introduction contents summary (bullet list), as suggested.
    • We have fixed the typos indicated.
    • We have added numeric suffixes to more entities and activities to make clear that they are instances rather than classes of occurrence, e.g. composition1, compile1.
    • See the latest primer at: https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/primer/Primer.html
  • Original author's acknowledgement: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-comments/2013Apr/0003.html

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