Re: PROV-ISSUE-30 (name-for-bob): What name do we use for the BOB construct? [Conceptual Model]

I guess what I'm arguing (and have been) is that the concept of Entity
needs a corresponding class in the model. Anything that is described
by a BOB is an Entitiy. Let's say that
http://tw.rpi.edu/person/JamesMcCusker represents me on the semantic
web, and a description of me might exist somewhere. Let's say it's an
RDF document that sits out on the web, and is called
http://tw.rpi.edu/instances/JamesMcCusker. That document refers to my
URI, and can be said in some way to describe me. We should be able to
say the following:

http://tw.rpi.edu/instances/JamesMcCusker pil:describes
http://tw.rpi.edu/person/JamesMcCusker.

That would in turn imply the following:

http://tw.rpi.edu/instances/JamesMcCusker a pil:BOB.
http://tw.rpi.edu/person/JamesMcCusker a pil:Entitiy.

We can now assert provenance based on that BOB, which is tied to a
pil:Entity that represents me.

Jim

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> Jim,
> Can you relate to the document. What is a pil:entity?  This construct does not exist.
>
> What do you mean by Bob does not represent ...? The definition says it's a representation.
>
> I am confused.
>
> Luc
>
> Professor Luc Moreau
> Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton
> Southampton SO17 1BJ
> United Kingdom
>
> On 21 Jul 2011, at 21:10, "Jim McCusker" <mccusj@rpi.edu> wrote:
>
>> I think we're still going around in circles.
>>
>> Entity: A thing in the world, can be represented by, for instance, a
>> URI. That URI, in PIL, is a pil:Entity.
>>
>> BOB: A description of an entity constrained by context (including time
>> and place). The description is not the entity, even within our
>> information representation. A BOB must be able to refer to something.
>> That BOB is a description of an entity, but does not REPRESENT the
>> entity.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 3:45 PM, Paolo Missier <Paolo.Missier@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I would advise against using the same terms with different typographical
>>> convention :-)
>>>
>>> what the document perhaps needs to clarify more upfront is that there is a
>>> "real world" and then a model of it, and the constructs of the language are
>>> about the model. It does say that but perhaps not strongly enough.
>>> - Characterized entity belongs in the world
>>> - BOBs belong in the data model that is a representation of the world.
>>> These two levels are never conflated.
>>>
>>> The good old "record linkage" community (data quality in databases) never
>>> had any qualms about using "real-world entities", as in "reconciling
>>> different records (BOBs?) that represent the same real-world entity".
>>> In their world (pun intended :-)), a record is a very concrete data
>>> structure that sits in a data store and you can display on a screen.
>>> Now, we cannot use "record", we have ruled out "information(al) resource"...
>>> but isn't that basically the territory?
>>> Entity representation?
>>>
>>> -Paolo
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/21/11 8:33 PM, Luc Moreau wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Khalid,
>>> OK.  This said we have over 20 occurrences of "characterized entity" in the
>>> text.
>>>
>>> We can't simply use the "expansion" everywhere. Having some terminology is
>>> desirable.
>>>
>>> Do you have a suggestion?
>>>
>>> We could also go for a typographic difference:
>>>   BOB -> CharacterizedEntity
>>> and we keep 'characterized entity' elsewhere.
>>>
>>> Luc
>>>
>>> On 21/07/2011 20:27, Khalid Belhajjame wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Luc,
>>>
>>> I guess I used the wrong term, "interchangeable". I guess that what I meant
>>> is that "Characterized Entity" can be considered as a candidate to replace
>>> "BOB". Of course, in that case, we will need to avoid the usage of the the
>>> term "characterized entity" in the core of the definition. E.g., we can use
>>> the following definition:
>>>
>>> A "Characterized Entity" is a description of the situation of an entity in
>>> the world.
>>>
>>> Or something in these lines.
>>>
>>> Thanks, khalid
>>>
>>> On 21/07/2011 19:54, Luc Moreau wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Khalid,
>>>
>>> As far as I know, they are *not* interchangeable. One is the language
>>> construct, the other is "in the world".
>>>
>>> cf. definition:
>>>
>>> A BOB represents an identifiable
>>> characterized entity.
>>>
>>> Should we go for "Characterized Entity", we need a typographic
>>> convention to distinguish between
>>>
>>> the construct and the world-thing, otherwise, the reader will never
>>> know whether this is language construct
>>>
>>> or not.
>>>
>>>
>>> Luc
>>>
>>> On 21/07/2011 19:45, Khalid Belhajjame wrote:
>>>
>>> In the Provenance Model initial draft, the terms "Bob" and "characterized
>>> entity" are used interchangeably.
>>> Characterized entity seems then to be a candidate for replacing BOB.
>>>
>>> Thanks, khalid
>>>
>>> On 21/07/2011 19:30, Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:
>>>
>>> PROV-ISSUE-30 (name-for-bob): What name do we use for the BOB construct?
>>> [Conceptual Model]
>>>
>>> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/30
>>>
>>> Raised by: Luc Moreau
>>> On product: Conceptual Model
>>>
>>> How do we call the construct referred to as BOB.  "BOB" was introduced as a
>>> placeholder at F2F1. Before F2F1, we use to refer to it as thing.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> -----------  ~oo~  --------------
>>> Paolo Missier - Paolo.Missier@newcastle.ac.uk, pmissier@acm.org
>>> School of Computing Science, Newcastle University,  UK
>>> http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/Paolo.Missier
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> 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
>>
>
>



-- 
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 Thursday, 21 July 2011 20:57:07 UTC