Re: PROV-ISSUE-630 (prov-sem-fpwd-review): PROV-SEM review for FPWD [Formal Semantics]

Hi James,
The document is well structured and reads well (the formalisms don't print
well in Chrome for some reason).

Review questions:
>
> 1.  Is the purpose of the document clear and consistent with the working
> group's consensus about the semantics?  If not, can you suggest
> clarifications or improvements?
>
> Yes (couple points for clarification listed below)


> 2.  Are there minor issues that can be corrected easily prior to FPWD
> release?
>
> Yes


> 3.  Are there blocking issues that must be addressed prior to release as a
> first public working draft?
>
> No


> 4.  Are there non-blocking, but important issues that should be discussed
> and resolved for future editions? (no need to list TODOs already reflected
> in the document itself, unless there is disagreement about how to resolve
> them).
>
> Possibly some points need discussions

My comments:

Section 2.1
a) "Identifiers are viewed as variables in logic (or blank nodes in RDF)" -
Not clear about reference to blank nodes in RDF (they are existentially
qualified identifiers?)

Section 3.1:
a) "An object could just be a record of fixed attribute values; it could be
a bear; it could be the Royal Society; it could be a transcendental number
like ..." - object is used in description of Thing - typo?

b) "It is possible for two Things to be indistinguishable by their
attribute values and lifetime, but have different identity." - Is there one
Thing with two identities, if there are two Things it would be natural to
have two identity? Maybe some clarification will help.

c) It is not clear why we need a strict disjointness constraint for object
and Thing.

c) "Objects encompass entities, interactions, and activities." - Then we
don't need to list "agent" explicitly for range of quantifiers in Section
4.1 (Remarks), Section 3.2.4 (Component 7 (4))

Section 3.2.3
a) " An agent can be an entity, an activity, or neither; ..." Not clear
about "neither"

Section 3.2.4
a) Not clear why the Associations, Communications etc. have to be disjoint?

Section 3.3.1
a) DerivationPaths=Entities⋅(Events⋅Activities⋅Events⋅Entities) - We can
replace Events by Generation and Used directly since the following
constraints specifies only one replacement for Events?

Minor Typos:
Section 3.2.2 Actvities/Activities
Section 4.4.12 "...two entities present aspects of the same
Thing..."/"...two entities present different aspects of the same Thing..."
Section 5.1 Inference 17 "alternateOf(e_2, e_1)$"/ "alternateOf(e_1,e_3)$

Hope this helps

Best,
Satya