Re: PROV-ISSUE-117 (general-comments-on-formal-model-document): General Comments On Ontology Document [Formal Model]

Hi Luc,
the ontology document is being reestructured (Khalid just sent an email
with the proposed
structure of the html), and the possible extensions have been separated in
a best practices document.

Can we close this issue?
Thanks,
Daniel

2011/10/6 Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org>

>
> PROV-ISSUE-117 (general-comments-on-formal-model-document): General
> Comments On Ontology Document [Formal Model]
>
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/117
>
> Raised by: Luc Moreau
> On product: Formal Model
>
>
> Comments about the document
> ---------------------------
>
> Assuming the ontology issues described above are solved, then there is the
> question
> of how the specification document should present the ontology.
>
> My *key* concern is that the document's motivation is *not aligned*
> with the charter.
>
> The ontology document says:
>
> - This ontology specification provides the foundation for
>  implementation of provenance applications
> - The PROV ontology classes and properties are defined such that they
>  can be specialized for modeling application-specific provenance
>  information
> - The PROV ontology is specialized to create domain-specific
>  provenance ontologies that model the provenance information specific
>  to different applications.
> - The PROV ontology consists of a set of classes, properties, and
>  restrictions that can be used to represent provenance information.
> - The PROV Ontology is conceived as a reference ontology that can be
>  extended by various domain-specific applications to model the
>  required set of provenance terms
>
> But the charter says:
> - The idea that a single way of representing and collecting provenance
>  could be adopted internally by all systems does not seem to be
>  realistic today.
> - A pragmatic approach is to consider a core provenance language with
>  an extension mechanisms that allow any provenance model to be
>  translated into such a lingua franca and exchanged between systems.
> - Heterogeneous systems can then export their provenance into such a
>  core language, and applications that need to make sense of
>  provenance in heterogeneous systems can then import it and reason
>  over it.
>
> So, it seems that there is a mismatch in motivation.  The
> standardization effort is about *exchanging provenance information*
> and not on how to represent it internally into systems.
>
> Section "4. Specializing Provenance Ontology for Domain-specific
> Provenance Applications" provides examples of how to specializa the
> ontology for specific applications. Are we saying this is normative?
> Is it the only way do it? My view is that this is purely illustrative
> and non normative.  The document should make this clear.
>
> I would even suggest that it needs to be presented differently. The
> focus should not be on how to specialize the ontology. Instead, it
> should demonstrate how applications, with specialized ontologies, can
> still interoperate.
>
> I thought that coming up with a series of normative MUST/SHOULD
> requirements would have been useful to establish interoperability
> criteria.  What should we see in the RDF serialization to ensure
> serializability?
> e.g. prov:Agent/Entity/ProcessExecution must be explicitly visible ...
>
>
>
>
>