Re: Primer first draft for review

On 23/11/2011 15:37, Simon Miles wrote:
> Graham,
>
> Coming back to one of your comments on the primer:
>
>> 2.1 Entities
>>
>> I think this doesn't really capture the relationship between entities and things
>> that may change, which is a key motivator for introducing the notion of
>> "Entities".  Cf.
>> http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/tip/paq/provenance-access.html#provenance--entities-and-resources
>> for possible adaptable text (though in this context you may prefer to avoid the
>> dependence on Web resources.)
>
> I agree that the primer text didn't adequately capture this. Just to
> be clear we mean the same thing, entities *are* things that can
> change, right? It's just that as soon as an attribute by which they
> are characterised changes, then it is no longer that entity.

I think so.  I'd say an entity may be a view or version of something that can 
change, but when that thing changes it may cease to be an instance of that 
entity.  (Almost exactly what you said, I think, but trying to allow that the 
constraints may be such that the entity-thing cannot change without ceasing to 
be that entity.)

> ... A web
> resource is an entity, even if there are also more specific
> characterisations.

Absolutely yes, IMO.

> I found it difficult to extract the PAQ text from the web context and
> seemed longer than ideal for the primer intuition section, so went
> back to the DM spec and tried to work some text from there.
>
> I tried adding some text (third paragraph) to the primer section
> below. Is this adequate?
>
> http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/primer/Primer.html#entities

I think so.  I think it addresses the motivation for introducing the notion of 
entity.

#g

Received on Friday, 25 November 2011 10:11:42 UTC