Re: PROV-ISSUE-411 (tracedto-inference): Should tracedTo allow tracing across specialization relation [prov-dm-constraints]

On Jun 19, 2012, at 2:41 PM, Khalid Belhajjame wrote:

> 
> 
> On 19 June 2012 21:10, Provenance Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org> wrote:
> PROV-ISSUE-411 (tracedto-inference): Should tracedTo allow tracing across specialization relation [prov-dm-constraints]
> 
> http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/411
> 
> Raised by: Luc Moreau
> On product: prov-dm-constraints
> 
> Hi
> 
> The constraints document allows for tracedTo to be inferred from derivation and attribution. Should the following also hold:
> 
> specialization(e2,e1)
> implies
> tracedTo(e2,e1)
> 
> 
> I didn't think about this hard, but my first guess is that traceability should be reserved to entities that are (transitively) related through activities. This does not necessarily apply to specialization: an entity e2 that is a specialization of another entity e1, can be created independently of e1.

I also don't see a strong motivation for this inference, since specialization is more of a "part of" relationship - to me it doesn't seem sensible to say "the BBC web site today" is  "derived from" or "traced to" "the BBC web site during 2012".  

But then, tracedTo is essentially building-in one specific (likely useful, but ad hoc) transitive "query" over the provenance, and nothing would break if we added this inference as far as I can tell (since there are no constraints that can be violated by adding tracedTo edges at the moment).

--James