Re: PROV-ISSUE-7 (define-derivation): Definition for Concept 'Derivation' [Provenance Terminology]

On 03/06/2011 13:43, Myers, Jim wrote:
> I think the answer should be obviously yes (I haven't thought of any
> examples where I'd want 'no') - if some state of a thing (r2_s) is used
> in a process instance to change another thing (r1) into some state
> (r1_s) then r1 is 'derived' from r2 *after the process instance occurs*.
Although that is one legitimate interpretation, I am not sure it is the 
only way.
There is more than one interpretation that one may think of:
a resource r1 is derived from a resource r2 if:
- a state of r1 is derived from a state of r2, or
- the first state of r1, i.e., the one resulting from its creation, is 
derived from a state of r2, or
- the first state of r1, i.e., the one resulting from its creation, is 
derived from the last state of r2, i.e., the state after which r2 does 
not change,
...

> In reality, I think many of our examples have this sense (or could have)
> - we might create a file (r1) and then copy/paste gov. data in (new
> state or r1) and claim r1 depends on the gov't data after that when the
> file in its original state did not. Beyond the OPM -style set of
> relations, I think the only addition needed to handle this is some way
> to connect a thing and an aspect of the thing capturing its state

Yes, I agree. One way of avoiding confusion is by specifying the state 
(or what you call aspect) of the resource (thing) when talking about the 
provenance.

Thanks, khalid

> (and I
> would claim it might be that r2_s is not the complete state, just more
> than r2, so we should think about capturing the relationship 'more
> stateful representation of' rather than trying to define two types
> absolutely).
>
>   Jim
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Khalid Belhajjame [mailto:Khalid.Belhajjame@cs.man.ac.uk]
> Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 8:15 AM
> To: Myers, Jim
> Cc: Graham Klyne; Luc Moreau; public-prov-wg@w3.org
> Subject: Re: PROV-ISSUE-7 (define-derivation): Definition for Concept
> 'Derivation' [Provenance Terminology]
>
>
> Hi Jim,
>
> On 03/06/2011 02:03, Myers, Jim wrote:
>> What do you want to capture with derivation of mutable resources?
> Simply that one mutable resource can be used in a process and produce
> another different mutable resouirce? If so, I'd ask why we should
> consider this case any different than immutable?
> To me there are issues that come out when considering the derivation of
> mutable resources. To illustrate this, I will give a simple example.
> Consider a mutable resource r1, which was in a state r1_s1, and consider
> a process execution that used as input a resource r2 in a state  r2_s to
> transform the state r1_s1 to the state r1_s2.
>
> Given the above, we can say that r2_s contributed to the derivation of
> r1_s2.
>
> Now, answering the question "did the resource r2 contribute to the
> derivation of the resource r1" is not obvious, or is it?
>
> PS: Sorry Luc, I know that we probably should stop talking about this,
> given that in yestreday's telecon we agreed that we will consider
> "immutable things" or "things/values" that are immutable according to
> some viewpoint as you suggested.
>
> Thanks, khalid
>
>> (Does the fact that most of what we want to call immutable resources
>> are undergoing constant change (bits getting refresh charges, files
>> moving about in memory caches, etc.) cause any issue with the basic
>> OPM-style model? I think all of these cases are handled just fine by
>> OPM-style constructs and I'd argue further that the key concept about
>> artifacts was not complete immutability with respect to any process we
>> can think of but immutability with respect to the processes involved
>> in the provenance (Eggs used in cake baking do not come out as
>> modified eggs (they become a new cake), but an egg in the fridge and
>> the warmer egg waiting to be mixed are considered the same egg only
>> because we don't want to discuss/report on the warming process that
>> occurred. The fact that an egg has mutability in its temperature
>> doesn't make it a bad artifact in OPM or cause trouble in reporting a
>> baking process...)
>>
>> The mutable case that presents a question is should we provide a
> second mechanism to allow one to describe a process that changes the
> state of a mutable resource?-to say that  egg with temperaturcold is the
> same egg with temperature warm after a heating process. I suspect that
> we can't avoid this use case completely but we might not have to create
> a separate mechanism: If we allow a resource egg to be associated with
> cold-egg and warm-egg resources, we can use the OPM like mechanism
> (cold-egg<-- heating<-- warm-egg) while adding cold-egg and warm-egg are
> 'aspectsof" the same mutable egg which 'participates' in a heating
> process. I think this is general and minimally disruptive. One could say
> that an egg participated in heating without creating other resources,
> but one could not directly describe the temperature of the egg before
> and after heating without creating the cold and warm egg artifacts.
>>    I think this also covers what we want from agents and sources - we
> want to convey that they participate in a process and, while their state
> changes as they do so, we don't want to document their state changes.
> But as Simon says we may still want to treat them (e.g. the Royal
> Society) as resources and talk about their creation so it would be
> valuable if they could just be artifacts in the context of
> creation/founding type events. Today, we have agents and sources as
> different types than artifact so there is no way to talk about their
> founding, etc.
>> --  Jim
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: public-prov-wg-request@w3.org on behalf of Graham Klyne
>> Sent: Thu 6/2/2011 3:45 PM
>> To: Khalid Belhajjame
>> Cc: Luc Moreau; public-prov-wg@w3.org
>> Subject: Re: PROV-ISSUE-7 (define-derivation): Definition for Concept
>> 'Derivation' [Provenance Terminology]
>>
>>
>>
>> Khalid Belhajjame wrote:
>>> Hi Graham,
>>>
>>>    >I agree that many of the examples of derivation we have raised
>>> relate to resource states.  But if, as has been suggested by myself
>>> and others, resource states are themselves resources>(especially when
>>> named for the purposes of expressing a derivation), then such
>>> derivations can equally be regarded as relating resources.  I think
>>> that's more a difference of terminology than>fundamental.
>>>
>>> Would it be fair then to say that in that view resources are
>>> immutable resources?
>> In the case of resources representing a snapshot of state, yes.
>>
>>> Which bring me to the question, do we want to express derivations
>>> between mutable resources, or that is just something that we should
>>> avoid at this point?
>> (I'm finishing this email after today's telecon, so it's a bit of a
>> re-run.)
>>
>> I think that many of our use-cases are based on invariant values, and
>> the near-term goal is to find expression for these.  So we definitely
>> do want to express derivations between non-varying values.  But in so
>> doing, it's not clear to me (yet) that we need to exclude mutable
>> resources, so I say let's keep our options open and not close off any
> possibilities that we don't have to.
>> So my answer to avoiding mutable resources is: "yes and no".
>>
>> #g
>> --
>>
>>
>>> Thanks, khalid
>>>
>>>> Where I think I may diverge from what you say is that I would not
>>>> limit such expressions of derivation to resources that happen to be
>>>> a state (or snapshot of state) of some resource.  I think defining
>>>> that distinction in a hard-and-fast way, that also aligns with
>>>> various intuitions we may have about derivation, may prove difficult
>>>> to achieve (e.g. as I think is suggested by Jim Meyers in
>>>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-prov-wg/2011Jun/0015.html
>>>> (*)).
>>>>
>>>> #g
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> (*) I just love the W3C mailing list archives - so easy to find
>>>> links to messages, and thus capture provenance!
>>>>
>>>> Khalid Belhajjame wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>>    From the discussion so far on derivation it seems that most
>>>>> people tend to define derivation between resource states or
>>>>> resources state representations, but not for resources.
>>>>>
>>>>> My take on this is that in a context where a resource is mutable,
>>>>> derivations will mainly be used to associate resource states and
>>>>> resource states representations.
>>>>>
>>>>> That said, based on derivations connecting resource states and
>>>>> resources state representations, one can infer new derivations
>>>>> between resources. For example, consider the resource r_1 and the
>>>>> associated resource state r_1_s, and consider that r_1_s was used
>>>>> to construct a new resource state r_2_s, actually the first state,
>>>>> of the resource r2. We can state that r_2_s is derived from r_1_s,
>>>>> i.e., r_1_s ->   r_2_s. We can also state that the resource r_2 is
>>>>> derived from the resource r_1, i.e., r_1 ->   r_2
>>>>>
>>>>> PS: I added a defintiion of derivation within this lines to the
> wiki:
>>>>> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/wiki/ConceptDerivation
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, khalid
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 01/06/2011 07:49, Luc Moreau wrote:
>>>>>> Hi Graham,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Isn't it that you used the duri scheme to name the two resource
>>>>>> states that exist in this scenario?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In your view of the web, is there a notion of stateful resource?
>>>>>> Does it apply here?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Luc
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 31/05/11 23:57, Graham Klyne wrote:
>>>>>>> Luc Moreau wrote:
>>>>>>>> Graham,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In my example, I really mean for the two versions of the chart
>>>>>>>> to be available at the same URI. (So, definitely, an uncool
>>>>>>>> URI!)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In that case, there is a *single* resource, but it is stateful.
>>>>>>>> Hence, there
>>>>>>>> are two *resource states*, one generated using (stats2), and the
>>>>>>>> other using (stats3).
>>>>>>> Luc,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I had interpreted your scenario as using a common URI as you
> explain.
>>>>>>> But there are still several resources here, but they are not all
>>>>>>> exposed on the web or assigned URIs.  I'm appealing here to
>>>>>>> anything that *might* be identified as opposed to things that
>>>>>>> actually are assigned URIs.   (For example, the proposed duri:
>>>>>>> scheme might be used -
>>>>>>> http://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-masinter-dated-uri-07.html)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (And the URI is perfectly "cool" if it is specifically intended
>>>>>>> to denote a dynamic resource.  A URI used to access the current
>>>>>>> weather in London can be stable if properly managed.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (I think this is all entirely consistent with my earlier stated
>>>>>>> positions.)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> #g
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Of course, if blogger had used cool uris, then, c2s2 and c2s3
>>>>>>>> would be different resources.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Luc
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 05/31/2011 02:25 PM, Graham Klyne wrote:
>>>>>>>>> I see (at least) two resources associated with (c2):  one
>>>>>>>>> generated using (stats2), and other using (stats3).  We might
>>>>>>>>> call these (c2s2) and (c2s3).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Friday, 3 June 2011 17:35:51 UTC