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- <title>PROV Formal Model</title>
+ <title>PROV Ontology Model</title>
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<section id='abstract'>
-<p> The PROV Formal Model (also PROV ontology) encodes the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]] in the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2). The PROV ontology consists of a set of classes, properties, and restrictions that can be used to represent provenance information. The PROV ontology is specialized to create domain-specific provenance ontologies that model the provenance information specific to different applications. The PROV ontology supports a set of entailments based on OWL2 formal semantics and provenance specific inference rules. The PROV ontology is available for download as a separate OWL2 document.</p>
+<p> The PROV Ontology Model (also PROV ontology) encodes the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]] in the OWL2 Web Ontology Language (OWL2). The PROV ontology consists of a set of classes, properties, and restrictions that can be used to represent provenance information. The PROV ontology is specialized to create domain-specific provenance ontologies that model the provenance information specific to different applications. The PROV ontology supports a set of entailments based on OWL2 formal semantics and provenance specific inference rules. The PROV ontology is available for download as a separate OWL2 document.</p>
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<section>
<h2>Introduction</h2>
<p>
- PROV Formal Model (also PROV ontology) defines the normative modeling of the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]] using the W3C OWL2 Web Ontology Language. This document specification describes the set of classes, properties, and restrictions that constitute the PROV ontology, which have been introduced in the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]]. This ontology specification provides the foundation for implementation of provenance applications in different applications using the PROV ontology for representing, exchanging, and integrating provenance information. Together with the PROV Access and Query [[PROV-PAQ]] and PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]], this document forms a framework for provenance information management in domain-specific Web-based applications.
+ PROV Ontology Model (also PROV ontology) defines the normative modeling of the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]] using the W3C OWL2 Web Ontology Language. This document specification describes the set of classes, properties, and restrictions that constitute the PROV ontology, which have been introduced in the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]]. This ontology specification provides the foundation for implementation of provenance applications in different applications using the PROV ontology for representing, exchanging, and integrating provenance information. Together with the PROV Access and Query [[PROV-PAQ]] and PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]], this document forms a framework for provenance information management in domain-specific Web-based applications.
</p>
<p>
The PROV ontology classes and properties are defined such that they can be specialized for modeling application-specific provenance information in a variety of domains. Thus, the PROV ontology is expected to serve as a <i>reference model</i> for domain-specific provenance ontology and thereby facilitate consistent provenance interchange. This document uses an example <a href="http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/prov/raw-file/default/model/ProvenanceModel.html#a-file-scenario"> provenance scenario </a> introduced in the PROV Data Model [[PROV-DM]] to demonstrate the specialization of PROV ontology.
</p>
<p>
- Finally, this document describes the formal semantics of the PROV ontology using the OWL2 formal semantics, [[!OWL2-DIRECT-SEMANTICS]], [[!OWL2-RDF-BASED-SEMANTICS]], and a set of provenance-specific inference rules. This is expected to support provenance implementations to automatically check for consistency of provenance information represented using PROV ontology and explicitly assert implicit provenance knowledge.
+ Finally, this document describes the formal semantics of the PROV ontology using the OWL2 semantics, [[!OWL2-DIRECT-SEMANTICS]], [[!OWL2-RDF-BASED-SEMANTICS]], and a set of provenance-specific inference rules. This is expected to support provenance implementations to automatically check for consistency of provenance information represented using PROV ontology and explicitly assert implicit provenance knowledge.
</p>
<p>The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
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</section>
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<section>
- <h2>Entailments Supported by the Provenance Model</h2>
- <p>This section covers the entailments supported by the Provenance Model, which include the standard RDFS, OWL entailments. ([[!OWL2-DIRECT-SEMANTICS]], [[!OWL2-RDF-BASED-SEMANTICS]])
+ <h2>Formal Semantics of the PROV Ontology</h2>
+ <p>The PROV ontology uses OWL2 as the ontology language, hence it supports a set of entailments based on the standard RDFS semantics [[!RDF-MT]] and OWL2 semantics ([[!OWL2-DIRECT-SEMANTICS]], [[!OWL2-RDF-BASED-SEMANTICS]]). In this section, we describe these set of semantics as applied to the PROV ontology along with a set of constraints introduced in the PROV-DM [[PROV-DM]] that are provenance-specific. It is intended that provenance applications can leverage this normative description of the formal semantics of PROV ontology to support:
+ <ul>
+ <li>Automated consistency checking of provenance assertions (in RDF) that use the PROV ontology as reference model</li>
+ <li>Make explicit knowledge that is implicit in RDF-encoded provenance datasets using valid entailment</li>
+ </ul>
</p>
+ <section>
+ <h3>RDFS Semantics for PROV Ontology</h3>
+ </section>
+ <section>
+ <h3>OWL2 RDF-Based Semantics for PROV Ontology</h3>
+ </section>
+ <section>
+ <h3>Provenance-specific Entailments Supported by PROV Ontology</h3>
+ </section>
<h3>Characteristics of Object Properties </h3>
<p>
The table below summarizes the characteristics of the object properties that are defined in the OWL schema. Some of them may be subject to discussion. In particular, regarding the object properties <i>wasControlledBy</i>, <i>wasGeneratedBy</i> and <i>isUsedBY</i>, we did not specify whether they are transitive or not. One may argue that given that an agent can be a process execution, a process execution, e.g., <i>pe1</i>, can be controlled by an agent <i>pe2</i>, which happens to be a process execution that is controlled by an agent <i>ag</i>, and that, therefore, <i>ag</i> (indirectly) controls <i>pe1</i>. The same argument can be applied to <i>wasGeneratedBy</i> and <i>isUsedBY</i>. That said, we are not convinced that these properties should be declared as transitive. In fact, we are more inclined towards specifying that they are not.