The Qualified Terms category is the result of applying the Qualification Pattern [[LD-Patterns-QR]] to the simple (unqualified) relations available in the Starting Point and Expanded categories. The terms in this category are for users who wish to provide further details about the provenance-related influence among Entities, Activities, and Agents.
The Qualification Pattern restates an unqualified influence relation by using an intermediate class that represents the influence between two resources. This new instance, in turn, can be annotated with additional descriptions of the influence that one resource had upon another. The following two tables list the influence relations that can be qualified using the Qualification Pattern, along with the properties used to qualify them. For example, the second row of the first table indicates that to elaborate how an prov:Activity prov:used a particular prov:Entity, one creates an instance of prov:Usage that indicates the influencing entity with the prov:entity property. Meanwhile, the influenced prov:Activity indicates the prov:Usage with the property prov:qualifiedUsage. The resulting structure that qualifies the an Activity's usage of an Entity is illustrated in Figure 4a below.
Seven Starting Point relations can be further described using the Qualification Pattern. They are listed in the following normative table.
Seven Expanded relations can be further described using the Qualification Pattern. They are listed in the following normative table.
The qualification classes and properties shown in the previous two tables can also be found in the normative cross reference in the next section of this document. All influence classes (e.g. prov:Association, prov:Usage) are extensions of prov:Influence and either prov:EntityInfluence, prov:ActivityInfluence, or prov:AgentInfluence, which determine the property used to cite the influencing resource (either prov:entity, prov:activity, or prov:agent, respectively). Because prov:Influence is a broad relation, its most specific subclasses (e.g. prov:Communication, prov:Delegation, prov:End, prov:Revision, etc.) should be used when applicable.
For example, given the unqualified statement:
:e1 a prov:Entity; prov:wasGeneratedBy :a1; . :a1 a prov:Activity .
One can find that prov:wasGeneratedBy can be qualified using the qualification property prov:qualifiedGeneration, the class prov:Generation (a subclass of prov:ActivityInfluence), and the property prov:activity. From this, the influence relation above can be restated with the qualification pattern as:
:e1 a prov:Entity; prov:wasGeneratedBy :a1; prov:qualifiedGeneration :e1Gen; # Add the qualification. . :e1Gen a prov:Generation; prov:activity :a1; # Cite the influencing Activity. ex:foo :bar; # Describe the Activity :a1's influence upon the Entity :e1. . :a1 a prov:Activity .
The asserter can thus attach additional properties to :e1Gen
to describe the generation of :e1
by :a1
.
As can be seen in this example, qualifying an influence relation provides a second form (e.g. :e1 prov:qualifiedGeneration :e1Gen
) to express an equivalent influence relation
(e.g. :e1 prov:wasGeneratedBy :a1
).
It is correct and acceptable for an implementer to use either qualified or unqualified forms as they choose (or both),
and a consuming application should be prepared to recognize either form.
Consuming applications SHOULD recognize both qualified and unqualified forms, and treat the qualified form as implying the unqualified form.
Because the qualification form is more verbose, the unqualified form should be favored in cases where additional properties are not provided.
When the qualified form is expressed, including the equivalent unqualified form can facilitate PROV-O consumption, and is thus encouraged.
In addition to the previous two tables, Figure 4 illustrates the classes and properties needed to apply the qualification pattern to ten of the fourteen qualifiable influence relations. For example, while prov:qualifiedUsage, prov:Usage, and prov:entity are used to qualify prov:used relations, prov:qualifiedAssociation, prov:Association, and prov:agent are used to qualify prov:wasAssociatedWith relations. This pattern applies to the twelve other influence relations that can be qualified.
In subfigure a the prov:qualifiedUsage property parallels the prov:used property and references an instance of prov:Usage, which in turn provides attributes of the prov:used relation between the Activity and Entity. The prov:entity property is used to cite the Entity that was used by the Activity. In this case, the time that the Activity used the Entity is provided using the prov:atTime property and a literal xsd:dateTime value. The prov:atTime property can be used to describe any prov:InstantaneousEvent (including prov:Start, prov:Generation, prov:Usage, prov:Invalidation, and prov:End).
Similarly in subfigure j, the prov:qualifiedAssociation property parallels the prov:wasAssociatedWith property and references an instance of prov:Association, which in turn provides attributes of the prov:wasAssociatedWith relation between the Activity and Agent. The prov:agent property is used to cite the Agent that influenced the Activity. In this case, the plan of actions and steps that the Agent used to achieve its goals is provided using the prov:hadPlan property and an instance of prov:Plan. Further, the prov:hadRole property and prov:Role class can be used to describe the function that the agent served with respect to the Activity. Both prov:Plan and prov:Role are left to be extended by applications.
The following two examples show the result of applying the Usage and Association patterns to the chart-making example from Section 3.1.
The prov:qualifiedUsage property parallels the prov:used property to provide an additional description to :illustrationActivity
. The instance of prov:Usage cites the data used (:aggregatedByRegions
) and the time the activity used it (2011-07-14T03:03:03Z
).
{% include "includes/eg16-journalism-qualified-usage.ttl" %}
The prov:qualifiedAssociation property parallels the
prov:wasAssociatedWith property to provide an additional description about the :illustrationActivity
that Derek influenced.
The instance of prov:Association cites the influencing agent (:derek
) that followed the instructions (:tutorial_blog
).
Further, Derek served the role of :illustrationist
during the activity.
{% include "includes/eg16-journalism-qualified-association.ttl" %}
This section finishes with two more examples of qualification as applied to the chart-making example from Section 3.1.
The prov:qualifiedGeneration property parallels the prov:wasGeneratedBy property to provide an additional description to :bar_chart
. The instance of prov:Generation cites the time (2011-07-14T15:52:14Z) that the activity (:illustrationActivity
) generated the chart (:bar_chart
).
{% include "includes/eg16-journalism-qualified-generation.ttl" %}
The prov:qualifiedDerivation property parallels the prov:wasDerivedFrom
property to provide an additional description to :bar_chart
. The instance of prov:Derivation
cites the activity (:illustrationActivity
) and the Usages and Generations that the activity conduced to create the :bar_chart
.
{% include "includes/eg16-journalism-qualified-derivation.ttl" %}