Re: prov-dm: draft for the new 'hadPlan' relation

On Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 12:37, Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> Following last week's agreement about introducing a notion of Plan and a
> hadPlan relation,
> find a first draft of the section describing this relation.
>
> http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html#record-planLink

Generally looks good. Captures most of the concerns previously raised,
such that it might not go according to plan, or the plan could change.


However I don't quite understand why a plan is always also an agent,
except due to restrictions on wasAssociatedWith(), which could be
revised.


An agent is to me something active, which might make its own
decisions.  (I don't mind that a plan CAN be an agent)


So I would expect there could be an agent who is *using* the plan (ie.
informed by it) and who is *controlling* (or even performing) the
activity. That is probably usually the case.

If I have built an IKEA book case according to the assembly
instructions, then the entity, agent and plan should be quite obvious
and distinct.


Your examples:

> a plan can be a workflow for a scientific experiment
plan: workflow
agent: workflow engine
activity: workflow execution

> a recipe for a cooking activity
plan: recipe
agent: chef
activity: cooking


> a list of instructions for a micro-processor execution
plan: instructions
agent: micro processor
activity: micro processor execution

(the last can be an example of where agent and activity can also be the same)


I however struggle to think of an example where the plan is also an agent.


-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester

Received on Wednesday, 14 December 2011 14:39:48 UTC