Re: How to model valid time of resource properties?

On 2014-10-13 13:54, Frans Knibbe | Geodan wrote:
> Hello!
>
> I wonder if a way of recording changes in properties of resources can be
> recommended. Many resources in real life have properties that have a
> time range of being valid. In some datasets, only the current (or most
> recent) state of a resource is stored, but in many cases it is important
> to keep track of the history of development of a resource.
>
> An example:
>
> :john_smith
>      a foaf:person ;
>      foaf:name "John Smith" ;
>
> Let's say that on 2013-09-27 John Smith marries Betty Jones. John Smith
> is still the same person, so it makes sense to extend the same resource,
> not create a new version:
>
> :john_smith
>      a foaf:person ;
>      foaf:name “John Smith” ;
>      ex:marriedTo :betty_jones ;
>
> How could I efficiently express the fact that the statement :john_smith
> ex:marriedTo :betty_jones is valid from 2013-09-27? And if the couple
> divorces, that the property has expired after a certain date? It would
> be nice if the way of modelling makes it easy to request the most recent
> state of a resource, any historical state, or a list of changes during a
> time period.
>
> A quick web scan on the subject revealed some interesting research
> papers, but as far as I can tell all solutions need extensions of RDF
> and/or SPARQL to work.
>
> Perhaps this question is really about the ability to make statements
> about a triple? Which is a problem for which no satisfactory solution
> has been found yet?
>
> Regards,
>
> Frans

Hi Frans,

This is not a comprehensive answer on this topic, but you might want to 
take a look at PROV-O [1] (which can address validity and history of 
entities) and maybe even employ OA [2].

Capturing temporal dimension of linked data by Jindřich Mynarz is an 
excellent read [3].

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/
[2] http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/
[3] 
http://blog.mynarz.net/2013/07/capturing-temporal-dimension-of-linked.html

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i