RE: prov-dm expression: a proposal to vote on (deadline Wednesday midnight GMT)

OK - I see the issue - calling them human assertions and logic/machine assertions might be a way to make it less confusing, but there's clearly a community where assertion and inference are technical terms for non-overlapping things.

Thanks,
Jim

From: Luc Moreau [mailto:l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 8:30 AM
To: Myers, Jim
Cc: public-prov-wg@w3.org
Subject: Re: prov-dm expression: a proposal to vote on (deadline Wednesday midnight GMT)

Hi Jim,
The term 'assertion' was not chosen because some records may be asserted, others inferred.
... inferred assertion ... is awkward.
Luc

On 02/11/2011 12:27, Myers, Jim wrote:
+0. Record is probably closer to the idea that these are assertions (has entity assertion, 'xyz' assertion been discussed as an option?) than expression. I don't particularly like record for the other connotations it brings in (provenance record is everything and we have that record containing other records this way), but is assertion or other better term is not available, record or statement sounds better than expression.

Jim

From: Luc Moreau [mailto:L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 7:54 AM
To: public-prov-wg@w3.org<mailto:public-prov-wg@w3.org>
Subject: Re: prov-dm expression: a proposal to vote on (deadline Wednesday midnight GMT)

Dear all,
kind reminder ...
Luc

On 10/28/2011 03:17 PM, Luc Moreau wrote:


Dear all,

In the interest of simplification, we would like to make the following
proposal about terminology in prov-dm.

The context:

Following this week's call, the prov-dm document will introduce
concepts such as entity and activity in section 2, and define 'entity
expression' and 'activity expression' in section 5.  In section 5 (see
table of contents of [1]), all terms of the data model have been
suffixed by the suffix 'expression', which allows us to distinguish
terms of the data model (i.e. what we say in provenance records) from
the things in the world.


The problem:

While this distinction is important, the choice of word is not ideal.
The suffix 'expression' has a strong connotation of language, and the reader may
think that we talk about expressions in the abstract syntax notation.
It's not the case!  We really mean elements of the data model.

Proposal:
Rename 'Entity Expression' into 'Entity Record'; similarly, rename 'XXX Expression' into 'XXX Record'.

Can you please express your support for this proposal by Wednesday
midnight GMT, and we will confirm it at the next teleconference.

Luc

[1] http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html






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Professor Luc Moreau

Electronics and Computer Science   tel:   +44 23 8059 4487

University of Southampton          fax:   +44 23 8059 2865

Southampton SO17 1BJ               email: l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>

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