Re: PROV-ISSUE-32: Bob definition [Conceptual Model]

On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 7:44 AM, Paolo Missier <Paolo.Missier@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:
> I agree with Khalid,
>  and at the same time I feel that there is lack of agreement on the use of
> terms
> - describe
> - represents
>
> which I suspect is ultimately just a matter of terminology rather than of
> deep substance.
> I suggest that a specific issue on this be raised against the doc, as it
> makes it sooo much easier to follow it (at least for me).

To me, "describes" and "represents" are pretty clear:

A URI can represent something. It, in itself, does not describe
anything, since it's just a URI. A document can describe something,
but does not represent anything. A URI can potentially represent the
document you get when you dereference it, or it could represent the
thing that is described when you dereference it. The document can
usually clear that up (is that URI a foaf:Document or foaf:Person, for
instance?).

The question is, is a BOB more like a document, or more like a URI? I
had assumed it was more like a document, since people had been
discussing how it would "contain" assertions sufficient to identify
the entity in question.

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 Monday, 25 July 2011 13:45:56 UTC