Re: Workflow Example in Formal Model HTML document

HI Graham,
>You say that "A provenance container is a house-keeping construct of
PROV-DM", which might be a way of saying that a >provenance container is a
construct of the provenance ASN, which does not directly denote anything in
the real world.

I was just quoting the current definition of Provenance Container from the
PROV-DM document - this is not my definition.

>Entities can be (probably often are) constructs that convey information
encoded to some language or format (an HTML >page, a Word document, etc.).
 So an entity can *be* a a provenance ASN construct (e.g. represented as
RDF).
>In this way, a provenance expression can refer to some other provenance
expression as an entity, without having to >explicitly expose the container
as a special case in the domain ontology.
>Or to put it another way, a provenance container is a specialization of
Entity to exactly the same extent that a web page or >a word document is a
specialization of Entity.

I could not agree more! :)

Thanks.

Best,
Satya


On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 6:49 AM, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org> wrote:

> Satya,
>
> You say that "A provenance container is a house-keeping construct of
> PROV-DM", which might be a way of saying that a provenance container is a
> construct of the provenance ASN, which does not directly denote anything in
> the real world.
>
> Entities can be (probably often are) constructs that convey information
> encoded to some language or format (an HTML page, a Word document, etc.).
>  So an entity can *be* a a provenance ASN construct (e.g. represented as
> RDF).
>
> In this way, a provenance expression can refer to some other provenance
> expression as an entity, without having to explicitly expose the container
> as a special case in the domain ontology.
>
> Or to put it another way, a provenance container is a specialization of
> Entity to exactly the same extent that a web page or a word document is a
> specialization of Entity.
>
> Does this help?
>
> [Later]
>
> I think this is consistent with luc's response.
>
> #g
> --
>
>
> On 29/09/2011 03:10, Satya Sahoo wrote:
>
>> Hi Luc,
>> We were not able to reach an agreement on how ProvenanceContainer is not a
>> specialized type of Entity during our ontology call on Monday due to time
>> constraints.
>>
>> To help better understand the differences and similarities, I copied the
>> two
>> definition from PROV-DM to two documents and tried to compare them
>> side-by-side. The following are the two definitions:
>>
>> ===Entity====
>> In PROV-DM, an entity expression is a representation of an identifiable
>> characterized thing.
>>
>> ===ProvenanceContainer===
>> A provenance container is a house-keeping construct of PROV-DM, also
>> capable
>> of bundling PROV-DM expressions. A provenance container is not an
>> expression, but can be exploited to return all the provenance assertions
>> in
>> response to a request for the provenance of something ([PROV-PAQ]).
>>
>> According to the two definitions, a provenance container can be an
>> "identifiable characterized thing" (not being an expression is not a
>> conceptual constraint). Also, the ability to return all provenance
>> assertions in response can be applied to an Agent also - similar to a
>> software agent returning the current stock market quotes.
>>
>> Further, if an Entity "contains" provenance assertions it can still be an
>> "identifiable characterized thing" thereby satisfying our current
>> definition
>> of Entity.
>>
>> During our ontology telcon today Paolo explained that the primary
>> difference
>> between Entity and Provenance Container is that Provenance Container can
>> "contain" provenance assertions while Entity are assumed not to contain
>> assertions. But, this seems to be an application-specific requirement.
>>
>> For example, for a person writing a 3-page letter the three pages will be
>> instances of Entity and the envelope containing the three pages will be a
>> container. But for the postal service personnel, who deal with thousands
>> of
>> envelopes per day, the envelope is an Entity (and a sack for transporting
>> the envelopes will be a container).
>>
>> Hence, I believe the difference between what thing is a
>> ProvenanceContainer
>> or an Entity is an application-specific perspective/requirement and there
>> is
>> no fundamental difference between the two terms - except that Provenance
>> terms seems to be a specialized form an Entity in the sense that
>> Provenance
>> Container contains provenance assertions, while an Entity may or may
>> notcontain provenance assertions.
>>
>>
>> Paolo suggested that we should bring up this issue to the WG mailing list
>> -
>> hence I am cc'ing the mailing list also.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Best,
>> Satya
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 3:58 AM, Luc Moreau<L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.**uk<L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>> >wrote:
>>
>>  **
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>> I thought we had already discussed this, but I see location as subtype of
>>> entity.
>>> Same issue as with provenance container.  This is not a subtype of
>>> entity.
>>>
>>> Luc
>>> --
>>>
>>> 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
>>> United Kingdom                     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~**lavm<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lavm>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>