PROV-ISSUE-206 (agent-asserted-not-inferred): agents should not be inferred, and wasAssociatedWith should also work with entities [prov-dm]

PROV-ISSUE-206 (agent-asserted-not-inferred): agents should not be inferred, and wasAssociatedWith should also work with entities [prov-dm]

http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/206

Raised by: Luc Moreau
On product: prov-dm



Inference 
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html#association-agent
originates back from an agreement at F2F1, where we said that agents can be inferred from wasControlledBy.

The inference was kept, and wasControlledBy replaced by wasAssociatedWith.

However, I think this has undesirable consequences. For instance, in the example that follows constraint
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html#wasStartedBy,
we see that an entity (a request to create an activity) is inferred to become
an agent because of the above inferences.

There are many notions of agents out there, and we should go for minimum semantic commitment in prov-dm to facilitate adoption. Inferring agent is likely to be suspicious in some communities.

Hence, proposal 1: remove inference association-agent from the document.

Furthermore, for the example above to type correctly, 

proposal 2: allow wasAssociatedWith to relate an activity and an entity

proposal 3: allow two forms for wasAssociatedWith:
           wasAssociatedWith(activity, agent, plan, attributes)
              and
           wasAssociatedWith(activity, entity, attributes)


Cheers,
Luc

Received on Wednesday, 21 December 2011 22:11:10 UTC