Re: Formal semantics draft

Hi James,

I took a quick look at the complementarity/view sections.

I think there's still some dust to settle on this debate w.r.t. the data model, 
and whether the concepts are based on intervals or attributes or something else, 
so I'll hold off commenting, except to note:

Your definition of viewOf(a,b) asserts that the things denoted buy a and b are 
different objects.  Personally, I wouldn't require this, and allow viewOf(a,a). 
  But I think it's more a matter of style than fundamental importance.

#g
--

On 19/12/2011 18:32, James Cheney wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've revised the formal semantics draft at:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/wiki/FormalSemanticsStrawman
>
> This is still work in progress, and there are a number of areas flagged TODO or left out of scope.  However, I think it would be good to get feedback on this before filling in all of these.
>
> The main issue (which is still in flux in the discussions on the mailing list) is the treatment of wasComplementOf/viewOf/foobar.  I've kept the old section that attempted to formalize wasComplementOf and I've added two new sections that discuss viewOf and foobar relations.
>
> The current treatment suggest that there is a mismatch between my intuition of entities as things that change over time, and entity records that describe temporary states of entities, vs. the view taken in PROV-DM where wasComplementOf and company are assertions about how different entity records are related.
>
> I think that handling these relations (as currently described in PROV-DM) will require adding something to the formal semantics, along the lines of a relation linking different entity records that are "views" of the same underlying (changing) thing.
>
> I also think that it might be best to simplify interpretations to be time-independent, which would align with viewing them as URIs.
>
> Comments are welcome.
>
> --James

Received on Monday, 19 December 2011 21:13:25 UTC