- From: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:55:12 +0100
- To: Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
- CC: Provenance Working Group WG <public-prov-wg@w3.org>
On 22/10/2011 18:29, Luc Moreau wrote: > PROPOSED: in section 2.1 [1], to define an entity as an identifiable > characterized thing. +1 > Assuming we go ahead with this proposal, section 2.1 would > define : > - 'Entity' and > - 'Activity', > whereas section 5.2 [2] would define: > - 'Entity Expression' and > - 'Process Execution Expression' > This is not symmetric and this is confusing. This issue > (PROV-ISSUE-129) was also raised by Yolanda. IIRC, they are actually describing different things: Entity as a thing in the world, or domain of discourse, and Entity Expression as a linguistic construct of the PASN. Sometimes, in informal text, distinctions like this can be glossed over, but in this case I think it's safer to maintain it. > The term 'Process Execution' is dating back from the charter, and was > never questioned. It feels that Activity is more intuitive and > broader than process execution. > > In the spirit of simplification [3] of the presentation and model, > I am suggesting, the following. > > PROPOSED: to rename 'process execution' by 'activity' -1 Maybe there's a reason it's never been questioned :) I think the term "process execution" is actually quite useful for distinguishing the notion of (roughly) a process of Entity consumption/generation that has actually happened from the myriad of other possible things that could be denoted by "activity". It also seems to be terminology that is quite well established in provenance circles, and is not confusing for non-provenance-cognoscenti. It's only disadvantage that I see is it's being two words instead of one, but that seems a small price to pay here. #g
Received on Wednesday, 26 October 2011 11:08:58 UTC