RE: PROV-ISSUE-474 (instances-and-bundles): Bundles and valid instances [prov-dm-constraints]

Hello James,

I strongly agree with the suggested general solution. I have no objection to "dataset" as a term. If you do still need to talk about bundles at all in PROV-Constraints, I think it should be made clear that the "toplevel" does not need to be named (does not need to be a bundle) to avoid confusion of concepts for different purposes.

As said on the IRC, I don't think this is a blocking issue, just a matter of text clarification.

thanks,
Simon

Dr Simon Miles
Senior Lecturer, Department of Informatics
Kings College London, WC2R 2LS, UK
+44 (0)20 7848 1166

Evolutionary Testing of Autonomous Software Agents:
http://eprints.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/1370/
________________________________________
From: James Cheney [jcheney@inf.ed.ac.uk]
Sent: 09 August 2012 17:21
To: Provenance Working Group
Subject: Re: PROV-ISSUE-474 (instances-and-bundles): Bundles and valid instances [prov-dm-constraints]

We discussed this in the teleconference and it sounded like it would be appropriate to find better terminology for the following three things, which are currently not clearly distinguished:

- "the whole PROV instance, including set of toplevel statements and bundles"
- "a particular set of statements, either the toplevel one or one within a bundle"
- bundle = "a named set of provenance statements"

My initial proposal is "PROV dataset", "PROV instance", and "bundle".  I believe "PROV dataset" is roughly analogous to what people call "dataset" in the context of SPARQL; if anyone knows different (or has objections or better suggestions), let me know.

I'll send another message on this when this is ready for review.

--James

On Aug 9, 2012, at 3:45 PM, Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker wrote:

> PROV-ISSUE-474 (instances-and-bundles): Bundles and valid instances [prov-dm-constraints]
>
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/474
>
> Raised by: Simon Miles
> On product: prov-dm-constraints
>
> As requested, I'm submitting an issue where I feel a PROV-Constraints review comment of mine is not completely answered.
>
> My original comment:
>> Bundles
>> -------
>> F. Section 6.1 seems a bit out of the blue. "The definitions
>> [etc.]... assume a PROV instance with exactly one bundle", and then
>> multiple bundles are handled as exactly the same number of
>> instances. Why? Why is there a connection between number of instances
>> and number of bundles? Why would a bundle be considered to be only one
>> instance? I thought a bundle was an identified set of statements,
>> allowing for provenance of provenance, which seems a distinct matter
>> from whether a set of statements are valid. It seems fine for a user
>> to treat one bundle as one instance if they want to, but there's no
>> reason given why this is the general case.
>
> Response from editors:
>> I am not sure I understand this comment.  However, I have rewritten
>> slightly the intro of section 6.1.
>>
>> "The definitions, inferences, and constraints, and the resulting notions of normalization, validity and equivalence, assume a PROV instance that consists of exactly one bundle, the toplevel bundle, containing all PROV statements in the top level of the bundle (that is, not enclosed in a named bundle). In this section, we describe how to deal with PROV instances consisting of multiple named bundles. Briefly, each bundle is handled independently; there is no interaction between bundles from the perspective of applying definitions, inferences, or constraints, computing normal forms, or checking validity or equivalence."
>
> I agree this is clearer, but I don't feel it answers the key questions in my comment. To put my comment another way: you have explained checking validity where an instance consists of one bundle and of multiple bundles. The two other possibilities I see are:
> (a) A bundle containing multiple instances;
> (b) An instance that is a collection of PROV descriptions with no identifier and so is not a bundle, e.g. a provenance service query result.
>
> How do we deal with each of these cases? Or, if they cannot occur, why not?
>
> Thanks,
> Simon
>
>
>
>
>


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Received on Thursday, 9 August 2012 16:43:22 UTC