Re: PROV-ISSUE-455 (Dong): Type mismatch between PROV-O and PROV-DM [Ontology]

Dong,

PROV-O has avoided calling the class PrimarySource to avoid the very likely situation where a modeler will assume it to be a subclass of Entity (i.e., the object of the hadPrimarySource property).


On Jul 18, 2012, at 8:50 AM, Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:

> PROV-ISSUE-455 (Dong): Type mismatch between PROV-O and PROV-DM [Ontology]
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/455
> 
> Raised by: Trung Dong Huynh
> On product: Ontology
> 
> In PROV-DM and PROV-N, prov:PrimarySource is used as the type for the hadPrimarySource relation


DM says:

"A primary source ◊ for a topic"

The essential bit here is "for a topic", not "in all cases". This makes it a relation and not a class.

The DM is clear about this distinction:
"A primary source ◊ relation is a particular case of derivation of secondary materials from their primary sources."

So, the name of the _concept_ is just fine.


That leaves only PROV-N, which levels the playing field a bit.
From the PROV-N perspective, it is natural to "type" the derivation relation. PROV-N does not have the class hierarchy mechanism like OWL does, so it does not face the same naming challenge that I described above.

> while PROV-O currently uses prov:Source (http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/prov-dm.html#cross-references-to-prov-o-and-prov-n).
> I think there should not be such a mismatch given that both the documents share the same namespace.

Agreed. A mismatch is unacceptable, I think.

-Tim