An entity is a physical, digital, conceptual, or other kind of thing with some fixed aspects; entities may be real or imaginary.
An activity is something that occurs over a period of time and acts upon or with entities; it may include consuming, processing, transforming, modifying, relocating, using, or generating entities. An agent is something that bears some form of responsibility for an activity taking place, for the existence of an entity, or for another agent's activity. Generation is the completion of production of a new entity by an activity. This entity did not exist before generation and becomes available for usage after this generation. Usage is the beginning of utilizing an entity by an activity. Before usage, the activity had not begun to utilize this entity and could not have been affected by the entity. A derivation is a transformation of an entity into another, an update of an entity resulting in a new one, or the construction of a new entity based on a pre-existing entity. A plan is an entity that represents a set of actions or steps intended by one or more agents to achieve some goals. A collection is an entity that provides a structure to some constituents that must themselves be entities. These constituents are said to be member of the collections. An empty dictionary is a dictionary without members. An empty collection is a collection without members. A dictionary is a collection whose members are indexed by keys. Provenance is a record that describes the people, institutions, entities, and activities, involved in producing, influencing, or delivering a piece of data or a thing. Responsibility is the fact that an agent is accountable for the actions of a "subordinate" agent, in the context of an activity. Delegation is the assignment of authority and responsibility to an agent (by itself or by another agent) to carry out a specific activity as a delegate or representative, while the agent it acts on behalf of retains some responsibility for the outcome of the delegated work. An activity association is an assignment of responsibility to an agent for an activity, indicating that the agent had a role in the activity. It further allows for a plan to be specified, which is the plan intended by the agent to achieve some goals in the context of this activity. An activity association is an assignment of responsibility to an agent for an activity, indicating that the agent had a role in the activity. An entity generation event is the instantaneous event that marks the final instant of an entity's creation timespan, after which it is no longer available for use. An entity usage event is the instantaneous event that marks the first instant of an entity's consumption timespan by an activity. An entity destruction event is the instantaneous event that marks the initial instant of an entity's destruction timespan, after which it no longer becomes available for use. An activity start event is the instantaneous event that marks the instant an activity starts. An activity end event is the instantaneous event that marks the instant an activity ends. An instantaneous event, or event for short, happens in the world and marks a change in the world, in its activities and in its entities. An annotation is a link between something that is identifiable and a note referred to by its identifier. A note is an identified set of application-specific attribute-value pairs. A quotation is the repeat of (some or all of) an entity, such as text or image, by someone who may or may not be its original author. A primary source for a topic refers to something produced by some agent with direct experience and knowledge about the topic, at the time of the topic's study, without benefit from hindsight. A revision is a derivation for which the resulting entity is a revised version of some original. Start is when an activity is deemed to have been started by an entity, known as trigger. The activity did not exist before its start. Any usage, generation, or invalidation involving an activity follows the activity's start. A start may refer to a trigger entity that set off the activity, or to an activity, known as starter, that generated the trigger. End is when an activity is deemed to have been ended by an entity, known as trigger. The activity no longer exists after its end. Any usage, generation, or invalidation involving an activity precedes the activity's end. An end may refer to a trigger entity that terminated the activity, or to an activity, known as ender that generated the trigger. Attribution is the ascribing of an entity to an agent. Communication is the exchange of some unspecified entity by two activities, one activity using some entity generated by the other. Start by Activity is the start of an activity with an implicit trigger generated by another activity. Influence is the capacity of an entity, activity, or agent to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of another by means of usage, start, end, generation, invalidation, communication, derivation, attribution, association, or delegation. Insertion is a derivation that transforms a dictionary into another, by insertion of one or more key-entity pairs. Removal is a derivation that transforms a dictionary into another, by removing one or more key-entity pairs. Membership is the belonging of a key-entity pair to a dictionary. Membership is the belonging of an entity to a collection. Two alternate entities present aspects of the same thing. These aspects may be the same or different, and the alternate entities may or may not overlap in time. An entity that is a specialization of another shares all aspects of the latter, and additionally presents more specific aspects of the same thing as the latter. In particular, the lifetime of the entity being specialized contains that of any specialization. A qualified name is a name subject to namespace interpretation. It consists of a namespace, denoted by an optional prefix, and a local name. Person agents are people. A software agent is running software. An organization is a social or legal institution such as a company, society, etc. Invalidation is the start of the destruction, cessation, or expiry of an existing entity by an activity. The entity is no longer available for use (or further invalidation) after invalidation. Any generation or usage of an entity precedes its invalidation. A bundle is a named set of provenance descriptions, and is itself an entity, so allowing provenance of provenance to be expressed. A provenance locator is information that helps locate provenance descriptions. It can identify a bundle within which provenance descriptions can be found. It may further identify a service, or may offer a IRI where provenance descriptions can be found. The attribute prov:label provides a human-readable representation of an instance of a PROV-DM type or relation. A location can be an identifiable geographic place (ISO 19112), but it can also be a non-geographic place such as a directory, row, or column. A role is the function of an entity or agent with respect to an activity, in the context of a usage, generation, invalidation, association, start, and end. The attribute prov:type provides further typing information for any construct with an optional set of attribute-value pairs. A value is a constant such as a string, number, time, qualified name, IRI, and encoded binary data, whose interpretation is outside the scope of PROV. The attribute prov:value provides a value that is a direct representation of an entity as a PROV-DM Value. A provenance service is a service that provides provenance information or a provenance-URI given an identifier. A service-URI is the IRI of a provenance service. A provenance-URI is the IRI denoting some provenance information. An entity that is a contextualization of another entity presents all aspects of the latter as per the latter's description in another bundle (referred to as remote bundle), and therefore constitutes a particular case of specialization of the latter entity. The mention of an entity in a bundle (containing a description of this entity) is another entity that is a specialization of the former and that presents at least the bundle as a further additional aspect. Something that is a contextualization of another presents all aspects of the latter as per its description in a bundle, and therefore constitutes a specialization of the latter.