- From: Stephan Zednik <zednis@rpi.edu>
- Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:37:45 -0600
- To: Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
- Cc: "public-prov-wg@w3.org" <public-prov-wg@w3.org>
- Message-Id: <1BA83F36-03A8-43AB-9525-5870254D0B5C@rpi.edu>
Hi all, To answer Luc's question I originally intended to say that I thought an agent can be defined independently of process execution and I agreed that an agent should be a node whose relationship to a process execution should be defined by a control/participation/influence(?) edge. As I thought about it a bit more I began to wonder if agent was better described as a role (active participant) a thing takes in the context of some specific action (in this case a process execution). An agent is definitely a thing, but is that thing always an agent? Or is it an agent within the context/scope of the act it has participated in? A thing assumes the role of agent when actively participating in a process execution? I think I am leaning towards making 'agent' status of a thing dependent upon active participation in a process execution. --Stephan On Jun 20, 2011, at 11:28 PM, Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > Hi, > > Reiterating a previous comment I made, can an Agent be defined independently of process execution? > > We can use the definitions of Control/Participation to define an agent's involvement in process execution. > > If we see agents/things/process executions as nodes and Control/Generation/... as edges of a graph, > it would be nice if nodes could be defined independently of edges. > > Luc > > > On 21/06/11 02:33, Satya Sahoo wrote: >> >> Hi Paul and Stephan, >> In both your definitions, what criteria distinguishes an "agent" from a "process" - in terms of "do stuff"/"active role or produces a specified effect"? >> >> Reviewing the candidate definitions of Agents, I see that Jun's, Khalid's and my definitions use an explicit reference to a process (execution). >> >> What do you think? >> >> Thanks. >> >> Best, >> Satya >> >> On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 4:48 PM, Stephan Zednik <zednis@rpi.edu> wrote: >> I like this definition from the New Oxford American Dictionary because it ties in nicely with provenance >> >> "A person on thing that takes an active role or produces a specified effect." >> >> --Stephan >> >> On Jun 20, 2011, at 2:08 PM, Paul Groth wrote: >> >> > Hi All, >> > >> > What would people think of just adopting FOAF's definition of Agent for now: >> > >> > The Agent class is the class of agents; things that do stuff. A well known sub-class is Person, representing people. Other kinds of agents include Organization and Group. >> > >> > >> > thanks, >> > Paul >> > >> > >> >> >> >
Received on Tuesday, 21 June 2011 06:37:15 UTC