- From: Jim McCusker <mccusj@rpi.edu>
- Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:25:22 -0400
- To: Luc Moreau <l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
- Cc: public-prov-wg@w3.org
In my mind, there are still needs for two things: Being able to say that a BOB refers to a specific resource by URI. Being able to describe what the entity "looks like" at the time the provenance was recorded. My understanding was that a BOB was something like a named graph, graph literal (http://webr3.org/blog/semantic-web/rdf-named-graphs-vs-graph-literals/), or information artifact similar to iao:Dataset. The Bob would then have content that described, in some way, the entity in question. Hence the Bob being a description of an entity's state. If it is possible to know, there should be assertions on the BOB itself that say which entity the BOB is describing. Ideally, this is a URI of something that's referenced within the BOB. Jim On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 7:53 AM, Luc Moreau <l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > Hi Ryan, > > Over the last two weeks, there has been a gradual confusion about terms. > > To me, "stuff" and "activity" were not concepts we were trying to define. > We were stating that there are stuffs and activities in the world. > These words had to be understood with their informal/natural language > meaning. > > When defining PIL concepts, we were then using these terms. > For instance, a process execution is an activity. > > This had plenty of advantages for explaining the concepts, > and how to use them with respect to the world. > > Given this, I am saying it is not right to say we should conflate > stuff and thing (or f2f1:entity and f2f1:bob) > since the former was intended to be a normal word we use in natural > language, and the latter was intended to be a concept we define. > > In other words, in a spec, I was expecting "stuff" to be in normal font, > whereas "thing" would have been in bold/typewriter, or written pil:thing. > For instance, a <bold>ProcessExecution</bold> is an activity. > > Simon got away with it, by replacing stuff/f2f1:entity by the word > "anything". > > Ryan, you are avoiding it, because you use "that" instead. (BTW, your > text uses the term thing too! informally!) > > It makes explanations very difficult when we don't have a word such as > stuff, > especially when we want to say that there are multiple perspectives over a > same > stuff. This is why both the words pil:thing and stuff were used in the > definition of IVP of. > > I am all in favour of simplifying definitions, but your proposal is > preventing us from using an English word, which is very convenient to have > when defining or explaining or concepts. > > In the meantime, until we gain an understanding of all our concepts, > I propose we keep on using the term stuff (or f2f1:entity) in our > explanations. > > Regards, > Luc > > On 15/07/2011 06:36, 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 > -- Jim -- Jim McCusker Programmer Analyst Krauthammer Lab, Pathology Informatics Yale School of Medicine james.mccusker@yale.edu | (203) 785-6330 http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu PhD Student Tetherless World Constellation Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute mccusj@cs.rpi.edu http://tw.rpi.edu
Received on Friday, 15 July 2011 15:26:14 UTC