Re: A proposed provenance wg draft charter

Shame that we have had public discussion for 1 year, and you have 
written a document, in private,
and you only release now, despite our continuously asking for your input.

I am afraid I don't have time to read it before today's call!

Luc

On 10/15/2010 03:33 PM, Paulo Pinheiro da Silva wrote:
> Dear Luc el at.,
>
> I like the work that has been done at the incubator. Like Deborah, I
> regret not participating as much as I would like -- for different
> reasons than Deborah I have also had a difficult year.
>
> Concerning the bias mentioned in Deborah's message, I see that our PML
> group has put a lot of effort to understand OPM and I cannot see a
> similar effort from the OPM group to understand work that has been done
> at the PML side. For example, I put together a collection of PML papers
> together with some highlights that are related to the first scenario and
> the response was that previous work was done in the OPM side as well.
> Well, I read all the documents that were cited as a response that
> similar work was done with OPM (and OPM predecessors) and my conclusion
> is that some of the unanswered questions (referred to as provenance
> gaps) are still open questions in the OPM side of the world.
>
> Anyway, I do not see OPM as a subset of PML and my response to this is
> in the form of an article submission to the JWS special edition on
> provenance run by Yolanda and Paul.
>
> http://www.cs.utep.edu/paulo/papers/PinheirodaSilva_JWS_2010.pdf
>
> Anyway, I am releasing this article submission as a tech report as a way
> to substantiate my claim the URI for the tech report is above. Please
> note that this report is just my opinion and not an opinion of the PML
> group. I recognize that further effort needs to be done to fully
> understand the mapping between OPM, PML, and the many other important
> provenance notations out there and that is why I cannot understand this
> suggestion of us of recommending OPM as in the draft put out by Paul 
> Groth.
>
> Many thanks,
> Paulo.
>
>> Deborah,
>>
>> I think we should not forget the work that the incubator has done.
>> I do not understand your statement "there is strong a bias when one
>> starts with one
>> and tries to shoehorn in the others."
>>
>> Let's be concrete, I suppose you are talking about PML,
>> - what is the bias in OPM that makes it difficult to shoehorn PML 
>> concepts
>>
>> (ditto for other provenance languages).
>>
>> The mapping exercise, to my knowledge, did not identify any.  Please
>> correct me if
>> I am wrong.
>>
>> This issue needs to be nailed down. I am happy to have a teleconference
>> at some other
>> mutually convenient time. But, we need to be able to justify our
>> position.  It's important
>> to do it soon, because we can't write a final report properly with
>> knowing what the conclusions
>> are.
>>
>> Regarding the "fast" aspect, I think it is crucial too. Otherwise,
>> somebody else
>> will do it, de-facto way!
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Luc
>>
>>
>>
>> On 10/15/2010 02:33 PM, Deborah McGuinness wrote:
>>>   On 10/15/2010 8:53 AM, Paul Groth wrote:
>>>> Hi Deborah,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your response. This is exactly the sort of discussion we
>>>> wanted to start.
>>>>
>>>> Luc and I wrote the proposal with the notion that we wanted a fast
>>>> working group.
>>> Fast working groups are good but I think we should focus on the
>>> outcome rather than fast.  it is not that fast precludes quality but
>>> we should not focus on fast and have that preclude other options that
>>> may be considered more representative of the broader provenance
>>> community.
>>>> With that in mind we thought it would be good to start with something
>>>> already existing and not develop a whole new model. Additionally, we
>>>> think that OPM is already a subset of what's out there already
>>>> including PML. I think the DAML+OIL comparison is not so apt because
>>>> OPM was already developed through a community process.
>>> Actually I think the DAML+OIL model is quite apt.
>>> DAML was developed by a large DARPA program over years with many
>>> participants.
>>> OIL also was developed by a consortium of people as well over time
>>> (and actually there was a little bit of overlap in the authors but it
>>> was relatively small).
>>> Both grew up at about the same time.
>>> While this is looking back, I would venture to say that if either went
>>> in as a proposed standard without engaging the other community, either
>>> would have had a VERY hard time getting through a standards body
>>> DESPITE the fact that each had a significant community who had worked
>>> on them.
>>> What happened was that  an adhoc US/UK working group self formed to
>>> put something together that reflected what the authors thought
>>> captured the essence of both.
>>>
>>> OPM was emerging in approximately the same timeframe as some of the
>>> other contender provenance models.  I agree of course that it came out
>>> of a community but it did not include much participation from some
>>> other communities.
>>>
>>> I think we need to look at what is out there now and determine what
>>> the starting point should be and I do not think that OPM reflects the
>>> starting point for some of the other communities.
>>>> Furthermore, as we say in the draft, OPM is the starting point
>>> My objection is to taking OPM  as the starting point.
>>> I think there is too strong a bias when one starts with one and tries
>>> to shoehorn in the others.
>>>
>>> Paulo in particular had raised a number of issues when he was trying
>>> to look more deeply at connections and embedded assumptions.
>>>
>>>> and would change over the coarse of the working group.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, since you have a lot of experience on these working groups, I
>>>> was wondering how you think we could design the charter to make
>>>> production of a recommendation as fast as possible with the approach
>>>> you have in mind?
>>> I agree that having one starting point and refining may be considered
>>> to be a fast approach  but if one really thinks there may be
>>> significant changes, then that may not be the case.  I think though
>>> that it could easily be interpreted as biasing the outcome towards
>>> that starting point (and i would interpret it that way and would be
>>> unhappy).
>>> I think though we need to be open to other starting points so i think
>>> we have to be open to other starting points.
>>>
>>> I see two routes that could be taken (and of course there are more).
>>> 1 - write a charter now that takes starting points as input
>>> 2 - follow the owl model and form an adhoc working group whose aim it
>>> is to come up with a joint submission for the starting point.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Also, at least from my reading, it seems that you would endorse
>>>> having a a working group work for a standard provenance model. Is
>>>> that correct?
>>> I  support a working group to come up with a recommended provenance
>>> model.
>>> I  do NOT support a working group that takes a single starting point
>>> and aims to refine that one to come up with the recommendation.
>>>>
>>>> thanks,
>>>> Paul
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Deborah McGuinness wrote:
>>>>>   Greetings,
>>>>> Thanks for the work on the draft charter.
>>>>> I am sending this quickly because i just read the beginning and have
>>>>> a significant problem with the slant of the charter with the
>>>>> position of
>>>>> "The goal of this working group is to refine the Open Provenance 
>>>>> Model"
>>>>> and thought I should air this immediately upon seeing the draft.
>>>>>
>>>>> I strongly believe that the charter of a working group that would
>>>>> end up with a provenance recommendation should start with the
>>>>> contender models and take the best aspects from many of them RATHER
>>>>> than starting with one model and refining it.  I strongly oppose the
>>>>> position that the charter should take any single model and work to
>>>>> refine it.  I would propose rather that this group would work like
>>>>> the recent RIF working group or others where contender starting
>>>>> points were submitted  or like the OWL working group where two
>>>>> contenders emerged - DAML and OIL and members from each side worked
>>>>> to create a submission - DAML+OIL that truly took elements from both
>>>>> languages and ended up with a joint proposal rather than this way
>>>>> that just takes a single model as a starting point.
>>>>>
>>>>> There was some disappointment in the group when we chose to map the
>>>>> other contender models to a single model, but most if not all
>>>>> understood that decision from the perspective of time.  I can not
>>>>> say though that i (or i expect others who were disappointed) could
>>>>> go along with this position in a proposed charter.
>>>>>
>>>>> I am sorry that this comes from someone who did not participate
>>>>> nearly as much as I had hoped to.
>>>>> I had an extremely bad year with my mother's multiple
>>>>> hospitalizations and general overwhelming health problems and her
>>>>> subsequent passing.   I simply have had no choice but to put
>>>>> everything other than family health at a much lower priority.
>>>>>
>>>>> Deborah
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 10/15/2010 7:58 AM, Paul Groth wrote:
>>>>>> Hi All,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Today on the call we are scheduled to talk about preparations for
>>>>>> the final report. Luc and I feel that to write a compelling final
>>>>>> report we should be clear about exactly what the report should
>>>>>> recommend. There has been some consensus that a working group
>>>>>> should be formed around the recommendations extracted from the
>>>>>> scenarios (
>>>>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Recommendations_for_scenarios). 
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To that end, we have prepared a draft working group charter (
>>>>>> http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/lavm/draft-charter.html ). We note
>>>>>> this is only *our own* proposal and we see this as a starting point
>>>>>> for discussion within the group.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We look forward to any comments, questions, thoughts about this
>>>>>> proposal. We hope this helps the group to continue to coalesce
>>>>>> around a way forward.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>> Paul and Luc
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>

-- 
Professor Luc Moreau
Electronics and Computer Science   tel:   +44 23 8059 4487
University of Southampton          fax:   +44 23 8059 2865
Southampton SO17 1BJ               email: l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk
United Kingdom                     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lavm

Received on Friday, 15 October 2010 14:56:40 UTC