prov-n section 2
authorLuc Moreau <l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:52:01 +0100
changeset 2014 4485c8b6b06b
parent 2013 b2fbbd487b1d
child 2015 dcc6d4b65d7b
prov-n section 2
model/prov-n.html
--- a/model/prov-n.html	Tue Mar 27 09:42:35 2012 +0100
+++ b/model/prov-n.html	Tue Mar 27 09:52:01 2012 +0100
@@ -242,16 +242,16 @@
 institutions, entities, and activities, involved in producing,
 influencing, or delivering a piece of data or a thing in the world.  Two
 companion specifications respectively define PROV-DM, a data model for
-provenance, allowing such descriptions to be expressed  [[PROV-DM]]  and a set of constraints that provenance descriptions are expectively to satisfy   [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]].
+provenance, allowing provenance descriptions to be expressed  [[PROV-DM]]  and a set of constraints that provenance descriptions are expected to satisfy   [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]].
 </p>
 
 
-<p>In this context,  PROV-N is introduced as a notation to write instances of the PROV data model, as close to its abstract  syntax as possible.   PROV-N is primarily aimed at human consumption. PROV-N allows
+<p>In this context,  PROV-N is introduced as a notation to write instances of the PROV data model primarily aimed at human consumption. PROV-N allows
 serializations of PROV-DM instances to be written in a technology independent manner.
 So far, PROV-N has been used in the following ways:</p>
 <ul>
 <li> PROV-N is used to provide technology independent illustrations of provenance in [[PROV-DM]] and in the definition of PROV-DM constraints [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]];</li>
-<li> PROV-N is instrumental in defining the mapping mapping of PROV-DM to concrete syntaxes. Mappings translate each PROV-N expression to RDF [[PROV-RDF]] and to XML [[PROV-XML]];</li>
+<li> PROV-N is instrumental in defining the mapping of PROV-DM to concrete syntaxes. Mappings translate each PROV-N expression to RDF [[PROV-RDF]] and to XML [[PROV-XML]];</li>
 <li> PROV-N is the basis for a
 formal semantics, in which each PROV-N expression is provided with an interpretation [[PROV-SEM]].
 </ul>
@@ -323,7 +323,7 @@
 <li>The interpretation of PROV-N arguments is defined according to their <em>position</em> in the list of arguments. This convention allows for a compact notation. </li>
 
 <li><p>
-PROV-N <em>optional arguments</em> need not be specified (when this does not lead to ambiguity).</p>
+PROV-N <em>optional arguments</em> need not be specified (as long as this does not lead to ambiguity).</p>
 <div class="anexample">
 <p>The activity, generation, and usage are specified in the first derivation, whereas they are not in the second.</p>
 <pre class="codeexample" >
@@ -351,16 +351,15 @@
 </pre>
 </div>
 
+<div class="anexample">
 <p>Activity <span class="name">a1</span> does not have start and end times specified, but  they are been marked syntactically.</p>
-<div class="anexample">
 <pre class="codeexample" >
 activity(a1, -, -)
-activity(a2, 2011-11-16T16:00:00, 2011-11-16T16:00:01)
 </pre>
 </div>
 </li>
 
-<li><p>The identifier always occur in <em>first position</em>.   For expressions with optional identifier, it may be expressed by the syntactic marker  <span class="name">-</span>.</p>
+<li><p>When an expression has an identifier, the identifier always occur in <em>first position</em>.   For expressions with optional identifier, it may be replaced by the syntactic marker  <span class="name">-</span>.</p>
 
 <div class="anexample">
 <p>Derivation has an optional identifier. In the first derivation, the identifier is not expressed. It is explicit in the second, and marked by a <span class="name">-</span> in the third.</p>
@@ -373,14 +372,20 @@
 
 <li><p>Most expressions have an optional set of attribute-value pairs, which occur in <em>last position</em>, and delimited by square brackets. </p>
 <div class="anexample">
+The first activity does not have any attributes. The second has an empty list of attributes. The third activity  has two attributes. 
 <pre class="codeexample" >
 activity(ex:a10)
 activity(ex:a10, [])
-activity(ex:a10, [prov:type="createFile"])
-activity(ex:a10, [ex:param="a", ex:param="b"])
+activity(ex:a10, [ex:param1="a", ex:param2="b"])
 </pre>
 </div>
-<li id="positional-vs-named-attributes"> PROV-N exposes attributes that PROV-DM provides an interpretation for [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]] directly as positional arguments of expressions, whereas those for which PROV-DM provides no interpretation need to be expressed among the optional attribute-value pairs.
+<li id="positional-vs-named-attributes"> PROV-N exposes attributes that PROV-DM provides an interpretation for [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]] directly as positional arguments of expressions, whereas those for which PROV-DM provides no interpretation are expressed among the optional attribute-value pairs.  This latter category of attributes 
+includes
+  <span class="name">prov:label</span>,
+  <span class="name">prov:location</span>,
+  <span class="name">prov:role</span>, and
+  <span class="name">prov:type</span>.
+
 
 <li id="subject-object-order">
 While  not all PROV-DM relations are binary, they all involve two primary elements.  The subject of the relation precedes its object.
@@ -1465,7 +1470,7 @@
 <li>  <span class="name">xsd</span> denotes the XML Schema namespace  <span class="name">http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema</span>.
 </li>
 </ul>
-<p>A PROV-N document MUST not redeclare prefixes <span class="name">prov</span> and <span class="name">xsd</span>.</p>
+<p>A PROV-N document MUST NOT redeclare prefixes <span class="name">prov</span> and <span class="name">xsd</span>.</p>
 
 <div class="anexample" id="anexample-namespace">
 The following example declares two namespaces.