Re: [VM] "Provenance information" (was: Telecon agenda)

On Tue, Nov 15, 2005 at 10:41:01AM +0100, Thomas Baker wrote:
> ITEM 2: Good Practice Requirements
> 
>     See http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/VM/http-examples/#Good-Pract

The text suggests "using as provenance information the ultimate
endpoint of an attempt to dereference the URI", then:

>ITEM 4: Hash Static Configuration, Good Practice
>
>    See http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/VM/http-examples/#Example2

suggests creating "a file '2005-10-31.rdf' that contains an
RDF/XML serialisation of the RDF description of all classes
and properties defined by example 2 ontology as at 2005-10-31
(or whatever is current date)".  This means that clients
"can use provenance to differentiate between conflicting
descriptions as the ontology evolves."

It is out of scope for the telecon today to explore exactly
what it means to "use as provenance information the ultimate
endpoint", so I'd like to start a thread here.

Given the examples above...:

-- would we want to say that the "ultimate endpoint" be either:

   -- the name of a file (e.g., "2005-10-31.rdf", as in
      the example above), or

   -- a pathname, e.g.,
      http://dublincore.org/2003/03/24/dces#title (which is
      currently the endpoint of an attempt to dereference the
      URI http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/title)?

-- Does what is referred to here as "provenance information"
   amount, in effect, to "date-stamping" -- using the URI
   string to convey information meant to be parsed and
   interpreted as the date on which the URI string was
   created?  If so, would it clarify things to state this
   more explicitly?

-- Is there any reason we might want to recommend the file
   versus the directory style of date stamping (or indeed a
   mixed style, e.g. http://dublincore.org/2000/02/26-dctype)?

Tom

-- 
Dr. Thomas Baker                      baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de
SUB - Goettingen State                            +49-551-39-3883
and University Library                           +49-30-8109-9027
Papendiek 14, 37073 Göttingen

Received on Tuesday, 15 November 2005 13:58:08 UTC