PROV-ISSUE-117 (general-comments-on-formal-model-document): General Comments On Ontology Document [Formal Model]

PROV-ISSUE-117 (general-comments-on-formal-model-document): General Comments On Ontology Document [Formal Model]

http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/117

Raised by: Luc Moreau
On product: Formal Model


Comments about the document
---------------------------

Assuming the ontology issues described above are solved, then there is the question
of how the specification document should present the ontology.

My *key* concern is that the document's motivation is *not aligned*
with the charter.

The ontology document says:

- This ontology specification provides the foundation for
  implementation of provenance applications
- The PROV ontology classes and properties are defined such that they
  can be specialized for modeling application-specific provenance
  information
- The PROV ontology is specialized to create domain-specific
  provenance ontologies that model the provenance information specific
  to different applications.
- The PROV ontology consists of a set of classes, properties, and
  restrictions that can be used to represent provenance information.
- The PROV Ontology is conceived as a reference ontology that can be
  extended by various domain-specific applications to model the
  required set of provenance terms

But the charter says:
- The idea that a single way of representing and collecting provenance
  could be adopted internally by all systems does not seem to be
  realistic today.
- A pragmatic approach is to consider a core provenance language with
  an extension mechanisms that allow any provenance model to be
  translated into such a lingua franca and exchanged between systems.
- Heterogeneous systems can then export their provenance into such a
  core language, and applications that need to make sense of
  provenance in heterogeneous systems can then import it and reason
  over it.

So, it seems that there is a mismatch in motivation.  The
standardization effort is about *exchanging provenance information*
and not on how to represent it internally into systems.

Section "4. Specializing Provenance Ontology for Domain-specific
Provenance Applications" provides examples of how to specializa the
ontology for specific applications. Are we saying this is normative?
Is it the only way do it? My view is that this is purely illustrative
and non normative.  The document should make this clear.

I would even suggest that it needs to be presented differently. The
focus should not be on how to specialize the ontology. Instead, it
should demonstrate how applications, with specialized ontologies, can
still interoperate.

I thought that coming up with a series of normative MUST/SHOULD
requirements would have been useful to establish interoperability
criteria.  What should we see in the RDF serialization to ensure
serializability?  
e.g. prov:Agent/Entity/ProcessExecution must be explicitly visible ...

Received on Thursday, 6 October 2011 08:39:28 UTC