Re: PROV-ISSUE-203: Proposal to amend definition and usage of Plan in PROV-DM [prov-dm]

Hi Stephan,

On 15/12/11 23:44, Stephan Zednik wrote:
>
> On Dec 15, 2011, at 3:21 PM, Luc Moreau wrote:
>
>>> PROPOSAL 2: Amend plan link record such that it is not a 
>>> specialization of an activity association record.
>>>
>>> Comment: I do not think we should define all plans as agents.  By 
>>> our existing definition a plan is a "set of actions or steps ... to 
>>> achieve some goal."  It is a description (usually in the form of a 
>>> document) of the action or actions an agent should take to achieve a 
>>> desired goal.
>>>
>>
>> If the intent is to allow plans to be entities and not agents, it is 
>> not the only approach.
>> I would like to suggest that:
>> 1. Constraint 
>> http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html#association-Agent
>>   should not hold, since the notion of just being associated with an 
>> activity does not imply agency.
>>
>> 2. Define agency independently from wasAssociatedWith.
>>
>> If we do this, then I think we can keep hadPlan as a specialization 
>> of wasAssociatedWith.
>>
>> My rationale is to try and minimize the number of distinct 
>> concepts/relations in the model.
>
> +1
>
> I definitely do not think association it should infer agency.
>
> --Stephan
>

You may recall that this was a hard fought battle at F2F1 (this was 
initially stated in the context of agent and wasControlledBy).

We are now seeing some problematic implications of this rule.

I am afraid of reopening a can of worms, but I feel that there is no 
other solution, to address these two problems.

Luc