PROV-ISSUE-645 (TomDN): Should we add a new constraint on EmptyCollection and Dictionary? [PROV-DICTIONARY]

PROV-ISSUE-645 (TomDN): Should we add a new constraint on EmptyCollection and Dictionary? [PROV-DICTIONARY]

http://www.w3.org/2011/prov/track/issues/645

Raised by: Tom De Nies
On product: PROV-DICTIONARY

Originally raised by Khalid, and agreed to discuss before the next release.

Khalid's email:
>Regarding prov:EmptyDictionary, I think there is anew constraint
>that can be added to state that an entity that is both a dictionary
>and an empty collection is an empty dictionary.

My response:
I would be cautious to adding new constraints, especially with PROV-DM constructs on the left-hand side.
Note that we have the reverse, in constraint D12.2. Technically, your constraint is correct and doesn't break anything. I guess I just don't see a use case where one would want to write:
entity(d, [prov:type="prov:Dictionary", prov:type="prov:EmptyCollection"])
instead of
entity(d, [prov:type="prov:EmptyDictionary")
This is, in my view, a way of specifying EmptyDictionary we should not encourage.


I would like to ask the opinion of the group on this before we the final release.

Received on Thursday, 7 March 2013 11:12:56 UTC