Re: Formalizing PROV-Constraints in OWL?

Stian,

On Aug 6, 2012, at 21:33 , Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote:

> In the PROV-O call today [1],  we agreed that it would be useful to
> have a formalization of PROV-Constraints in OWL.

I need some clarification. 

Clearly, there are terms and constraints in the Prov-Constraints that can be translated into OWL easily (reflexivity, transitivity, that sort of things). I have the *impression* (but I may be proven wrong) that in many other cases, even if it is possible, the resulting OWL statements will be fairly complex, possibly not even fitting OWL-DL (meaning that most of the reasoners will be unable to handle them). Ie, what would be the use?

The reason I am asking myself is because (again, I may be proven wrong) I have the impression that the translation of the Prov-Constraints into rules is way more natural (and it seems that a bunch of you guys have already made work on this). Whether we use RIF Core for this (essentially Datalog, if my understanding is correct), SPIN, or simply a set of SPARQL CONSTRUCT/ASK statements (much like Daniel & co. did for the Dublin core document) is a matter of choice, but all these are rule statements. If we have such a set of rules, those would be really useful; I am not sure what we would gain in practice by using OWL here.

(My personal preference would be to take the last alternative, ie, a set of SPARQL statements; the advantage is that it can be executed using any SPARQL processor whereas SPIN needs a particular, company specific implementation. But that is only me.)

So... can you guys give me some more justification?

Thanks

Ivan




> 
> In particular we are thinking about section 5, things like
> functionality, reflexibility, etc., rather than the long inferences
> and time order constraints which would be much harder to do in OWL
> alone.
> 
> We feel the PROV-O community in particular would mainly see use for
> validation checking rather than inferences, so that they can validate
> their produced PROV-O.
> 
> 
> Paul has also started work on [3] which uses SPARQL queries to create
> inferences [4] and constraints [5] - this could form part of a
> validator tool, which would be very useful.
> 
> We know Paolo and Khalid also published a paper at IPAW for checking
> PROV using DataLog [6][7]
> 
> 
> So we are looking for volunteers for doing similar work with OWL,
> ideas on how we should proceed, and perhaps a schedule for this.
> 
> Currently we have:
> 
> * Jun
> * Stian
> * Paul?
> * Tim (?)
> * Khalid, Paolo? (IPAW work on Datalog)
> 
> Anyone else?
> 
> 
> Our current idea is to go through (mainly) section 5 of
> PROV-Constraint [8] - modulo any later changes - and model these in a
> simple OWL file that extends PROV-O. This can be OWL-Full. We won't
> address time constraints or complex inferences.
> 
> We're also looking for ways to test this.
> 
> 
> In the interest of getting started, I've made a template OWL in Mercurial. [9]
> Feel free to modify!
> 
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/wiki/PIL_OWL_Ontology_Meeting_2012-08-06
> [3] https://github.com/pgroth/prov-constraints-validator-spin
> [4] https://github.com/pgroth/prov-constraints-validator-spin/blob/master/prov-rules/inference/activity/generation-use-commuication-inference-6.txt
> [5] https://github.com/pgroth/prov-constraints-validator-spin/blob/master/prov-rules/constraints/entity/generation-precedes-usage-39.txt
> [6] http://ipaw2012.bren.ucsb.edu/images/8/8e/Missier_encoding_slides.pdf
> [7] http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/paolo.missier/doc/IPAW2012-datalog.pdf
> [8] http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/tip/model/releases/ED-prov-constraints-20120723/prov-constraints.html
> [9] http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/03321d46ee14/ontology/prov-constraints.owl
> 
> -- 
> Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
> School of Computer Science
> The University of Manchester
> 


----
Ivan Herman, W3C Semantic Web Activity Lead
Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
mobile: +31-641044153
FOAF: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf.rdf

Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2012 10:36:37 UTC