- From: Reza B'Far <reza.bfar@oracle.com>
- Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:40:25 -0700
- To: public-prov-wg@w3.org
- Message-ID: <4E1FD2C9.8060301@oracle.com>
+1 On 7/14/11 10:36 PM, Ryan Golden wrote: > With apologies to Simon for hijacking his namespace, I'd like to take up Luc's > suggestion to break off what he called the "simon:entity" proposal from the > earlier thread into a separate thread. > > Rationale > -------------- > It should come as little surprise that some problems we are trying to solve by > our design have been faced before by others in different contexts. After > poring over the thread between Simon, Jim and others, I discovered a design > issue discussion at (http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Generic), published by > TimBL, which bears a _striking_ resemblance to the discussion we're having on > stuff, thing, entity, entity state, and bob. While he does use the "R" word > in some of the discussion, he makes the key observation that the identifiers > we use every day have "multi-level genericity." That is to say, some > identifiers are very specific ("Halley's comet, as viewed from the Hubble > telescope, on 1/1/2014, in JPG format"), others more generic ("Halley's > comet"). The Web design, he states, "should not arbitrarily seek to constrain > life in general for its own purposes." Neither should we, I would argue. > > Further, we may may make statements about "dimensions of genericity." That is > to say that a) in relation to the thing it identifies, an identifier can be > generic with respect to a particular dimension, e.g., in relation to the real > Halley's comet, the "Halley's comet" identifier is generic with respect to > time and content-type; and b) one identified thing may be generic in relation > to another identified thing with respect to zero or more dimensions. TimBL > talks about the relatively small number of dimensions of genericity for > electronic resources, whereas we are interested in the infinite number of > dimensions (i.e., all possible properties) over which identifiers and things > in the world (not just electronic resources) may vary. The idea of > "dimensions of genericity" gives what I believe to be a nice formulation for > what we've been trying to discuss as "IVP of." I leave the remainder of this > discussion to a separate thread, however (please post any comments on this > paragraph to that thread). > > If I fail to express some of TimBL's ideas adequately, I strongly suggest you > read the Design Note--it is brief and more well-written. > > Proposal > ------------- > Given both elegant formulations, I would like to propose we conflate the > following concepts: > old:stuff > old:thing > f2f1:entity > f2f1:bob > f2f1:entity state > > Into a single concept: > simon:entity (alternate suggested name: "Identifiable") > > Which can be described as: > that which an identifier represents > > And, importantly for IVP of: > A simon:entity/Identifiable may exhibit a different level of genericity in > relation to another simon:entity/Identifiable with respect to zero or more > dimensions. > > --Ryan
Received on Friday, 15 July 2011 05:41:12 UTC