questions about the relation of prov-aq to the normative documents

good afternoon,

upon reading prov-aq with the goal to implement access to provenance  
information for repositories in the dydra triple store, i observe  
inconsistent intentions with respect to that document's role in the  
specification. the document suggests, that it is intended to become a  
recommendation, while the overview states, that prov-aq is to be  
published as a note. should the latter be the true intent, some of  
the its exposition should be removed to a normative document before  
they are final. implementors will not be well-served if prov-aq  
remains a note, but is written in terms of concepts which are  
introduced there, without mention in either prov-o or prov-dm.

in "1.1 Concepts", the term "constrained resource" appears, with  
reference to prov-dm and to webarch, but the term fails to appear in  
either of those documents. the latter absence does not surprise. but  
one would expect it to have been introduced and defined in some other  
prov document which is more central than a "note".  the same  
situation applies to "target-uri".

in "1.2 Provenance and resources" the concepts are sufficiently  
central to the notion of provenance, that a reader could expect the  
passage to have appeared, for example, in prov-dm, section 2.1 rather  
than prov-aq.  central concepts should be defined completely in a  
nomative document - for example, some combination of -o and -dm, with  
the -aq document restricted to how access is to be provided to  
already defined entities.  as the documents stand, the reader must  
rely on the content of a non-normative note for their understanding  
of basic concepts required to implement access to provenance  
information.

the document would be improved, if some diagram were present to  
illustrate how the respective entities are made available in a  
concrete case by a service - or by distinct services, which afford  
access to  versioned and or derived resources and respective  
provenance information.

in section 3, the paragraph which begins "we start by" includes a  
list which describes three situations regarding the requester's  
knowledge of a resource uri. it is not evident, which "resource uri"  
is here the object? is it the provenance, the service, a target, or  
the about resource itself?

from appendix b, the several terms which are to be added to the prov  
namespace, should appear in a normative document, rather than in a  
note: hasProvenance, hasProvenanceService, hasAnchor,  
ProvenanceService, and provenanceUriTemplate.

best regards, from berlin,

---
james anderson | james@datagraph.org | james@dydra.com | http:// 
dydra.com

Received on Thursday, 31 January 2013 16:42:09 UTC