Extending hadRole to Attribution

Dear PROV people,

We are finding it unhelpful to have to implement a very similar property to prov:hadRole to model Entity/Agent relationships in the Data Exchange WG due to prov:hadRole’s domain restrictions.

In the reasoning for setting the domain for prov:hadRole to prov:Association (see [1]), the PROV WG indicated that there was this restriction, rather than allowing “roles for all relations”, due to a permissive approach potentially leading to confusion over who is playing what role. I understand the potential when there are multiple Agents involved, as per [1] in Delegation but this is not the case for Attribution. In the same way that there is no confusion over role here (from PROV-O [2]) in Association:

:illustrating
    …
    prov:qualifiedAssociation [
        a prov:Association;
        prov:agent   :derek;
        prov:hadRole :illustrationist;
    ];
    …
.

There would also be no confusion here in Attribution (from PROV-O [3]) if the ex:hadRole was, instead, prov:hadRole:


:nationalRegionsList

   a prov:Entity;

   prov:qualifiedAttribution [

      a prov:Attribution;

      prov:agent :civil_action_group;

      ex:hadRole :owner;

   ]

.

The role here can only have been played by one prov:Agent, the :civil_action_group.

Can anyone refute this reasoning or is there an deeper issue due to Agent/Entity non-disjointness? If not, can we use consider extending the domain of prov:hadRole to also include Attribution? This would make like much easier in DXWG.

Thanks,

Nick


[1] https://www.w3.org/2011/prov/wiki/index.php?title=ResponsesToPublicComments&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop#ISSUE-532_.28Role.29

[2] https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#Association

[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#qualifiedAttribution



Nicholas Car
Senior Experimental Scientist
CSIRO Land & Water
41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD 4102, Australia
E nicholas.car@csiro.au<mailto:nicholas.car@csiro.au> M 0477 560 177 P 07 3833 5632