PROV-ISSUE-169 (TLebo): Motivating provenance services in PAQ [Accessing and Querying Provenance]

PROV-ISSUE-169 (TLebo): Motivating provenance services in PAQ [Accessing and Querying Provenance]

http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/169

Raised by: Timothy Lebo
On product: Accessing and Querying Provenance

"3.2.1 Specifying Provenance Services"

has a note:

"This is a new proposal. It needs to be reviewed as to whether it is useful."


I didn't see the request to put this in, but I'd like to offer some independent motivation.


Some capabilities that a provenance service could provide that a "baked in" rel link could not provide:

1) Send me (via POST) the file (or its cryptographic digest) back, 

* I'll find you the "closest" document I know about (in case yours was changed)
* I'll point you to all newer versions of what you have.
* I'll point you to others that have done something with what you have.

Content-based manipulations can not be handled by hard coded rel links, but services can provide some assistance (through heuristics) that can inform the consumer about what they _have_, as opposed to what was _given_ at some point in the past.

Thanks,
Tim

Received on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 16:54:50 UTC