PROV-ISSUE-311 (clarify-optionals): Clarify optional arguments in DM [prov-dm]

PROV-ISSUE-311 (clarify-optionals): Clarify optional arguments in DM [prov-dm]

http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/311

Raised by: Stian Soiland-Reyes
On product: prov-dm

There seems to be some confusion over any of the 'optional' arguments in
PROV-DM/PROV-N. 

It is unclear if this means that the argument is *implied* (ie.
existential quantification/bnodes in OWL/RDF) or not applicable/not present (NIL).  

It might be good to go through all of the optionals in PROV-DM and make sure they make that clear. 

For instance:
> Generation, written wasGeneratedBy(id,e,a,t,attrs) in PROV-N, has the following components:
> id: an optional identifier for a generation;
> entity: an identifier for a created entity;
> activity: an optional identifier for the activity that creates the entity;
> time: an optional "generation time", the time at which the entity was completely created;
> attributes: an optional set of attribute-value pairs that describes the modalities of generation of this entity by this activity.

Change to:


> Generation, written wasGeneratedBy(id,e,a,t,attrs) in PROV-N, has the following components:
> id: an optional identifier for a generation, if unspecified the identifier is not known;
> entity: an identifier for a created entity;
> activity: an optional identifier for the activity that creates the entity, if unspecified activity is still implied, but unknown;
> time: an optional "generation time", the time at which the entity was completely created, if unspecified the time is unknown or not applicable;
> attributes: an optional set of attribute-value pairs that describes the modalities of generation of this entity by this activity, if unspecified an empty set is implied.

Received on Tuesday, 13 March 2012 11:05:46 UTC