Re: vocabulary simplification: two proposals to vote on [deadline, Oct 26 midnight, GMT]

Event is useful because there is a very easy plain english definition
that doesn't have any requirements on timespan or agency. I do realize
that Event is the superclass for a number of properties. But if I
remember correctly, that was my initial confusion around Process in
OPM, that Event was the thing that happened, and Process was the plan
for that thing. Maybe what we have as Event should be Involved or
similar.  Event is a noun, but used, wasGeneratedBy, hadParticipant,
etc. are all verbs.

Jim

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 6:15 AM, Paolo Ncl <Paolo.Missier@ncl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Paolo Ncl <paolo.missier@newcastle.ac.uk>
> Date: 27 October 2011 09:32:41 GMT+01:00
> To: Jim McCusker <mccusj@rpi.edu>
> Cc: Luc Moreau <l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>, Provenance Working Group WG
> <public-prov-wg@w3.org>
> Subject: Re: vocabulary simplification: two proposals to vote on [deadline,
> Oct 26 midnight, GMT]
>
> Jim
>
> I'm not clear on why "activity" was settled on as the simplest term.
> The root "act" is far less ambiguous, even though it too suffers from
> implied agency. Shouldn't we be opening this up to other suggestions?
>
> I did ask those who objected to propose an alternative.
>
> For instance, we can simplify the model by making Events either
> instantaneous or not (which aligns with the common definition of
> Event), and let Events be composites. Temporal events can be aligned
> with time.owl, but the temporal aspect shouldn't be required (as it's
> not required now).
>
> I still object to changing the semantics of events. I don't know what you
> mean by common definition of event. I prefer tom stand by the CSP definition
> of events, which underpins process algebras (see
> eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes)
> EventsEvents represent communications or interactions. They are assumed to
> be indivisible and instantaneous. They may be atomic names (e.g. on, off),
> compound names (e.g. valve.open, valve.close), or input/output events
> (e.g. mouse?xy, screen!bitmap).
> We have more modestly encoded a small set of events, and these are certainly
> fundamentally distinct from processes.
> Best, Paolo



-- 
Jim McCusker
Programmer Analyst
Krauthammer Lab, Pathology Informatics
Yale School of Medicine
james.mccusker@yale.edu | (203) 785-6330
http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu

PhD Student
Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
mccusj@cs.rpi.edu
http://tw.rpi.edu

Received on Thursday, 27 October 2011 11:51:10 UTC