--- a/model/working-copy/towards-wd4.html Sat Feb 18 21:34:32 2012 +0000
+++ b/model/working-copy/towards-wd4.html Sun Feb 19 22:02:49 2012 +0000
@@ -355,7 +355,9 @@
<p>
<div class="glossary" id="glossary-activity">
An <dfn id="concept-activity">activity</dfn> is anything that acts upon or with
-entities; this action can take multiple forms: consuming, processing, transforming, modifying, relocating, using, generating, or being associated with entities,
+entities; this action can take multiple forms: consuming them, processing them,
+transforming them, modifying them, relocating
+them, using them, generating them, being associated with them,
etc. Activities that operate on digital entities may for example move, copy, or duplicate them.
</div>
</p>
@@ -369,12 +371,13 @@
<p>
<div class="glossary" id="glossary-agent">
-An <dfn id="concept-agent">agent</dfn> is a type of entity that takes an active role in an activity such that it can be assigned some degree of responsibility for the activity taking place.
+An <dfn id="concept-agent">agent</dfn> is a type of entity that takes an active role in an activity such that it can be assigned some degree of responsibility for the activity taking.
</div>
</p>
-<p>Specifically, an agent can be associated to activities to denote the agent's responsibility for those activities.
+<p>The key purpose of agents is to assign responsibility
+for activities.
The definition of agent intentionally stays away from using concepts such as enabling, causing, initiating, affecting, etc, because many entities also enable, cause, initiate, and affect in some way
the activities. So the notion of having some degree of responsibility is really what makes an agent.</p>
@@ -394,7 +397,7 @@
<section id="section-generation-usage-derivation">
<h2>Generation, Usage, Derivation</h2>
-<p>Activities and entities are associated with each other in two different ways: activities are consumers of entities and activities are producers of entities. For the purpose of provenance, we define the following notions of generation and usage. </p>
+<p>Activities and entities are associated with each other in two different ways: activities are consumers of entities and activities are producers of entities. For provenance purpose, we define the following notions of generation and usage. </p>
<p>
<div class="glossary" id="glossary-generation">
@@ -429,10 +432,8 @@
<p>
<div class="glossary" id="glossary-derivation">
-<dfn title="concept-derivation">Derivation</dfn> of an entity from an another is a relation that denotes that the dervied entity is transformed from, created from, or affected by the deriving entity.
+<dfn title="concept-derivation">Derivation</dfn> is something by which some entity is transformed from, created from, or affected by another entity in the world.
</div>
-
-<div class="note">To be further refined in WD5</div>
</p>
@@ -511,9 +512,7 @@
responsibility of agents, and that is a major reason for
distinguishing among all the agents that have some association with an
activity and determine which ones are really the originators of the
-entity.
-<div class="note"> to be revisited for WD5. Paolo's proposed text: "Agents are defined in sec. 2.1 as having some kind of responsibility for activities. However, one may want to be more specific regarding the degrees of an agent's responsibility. For example, ..."</div>
- For example, a programmer and a researcher could both be
+entity. For example, a programmer and a researcher could both be
associated with running a workflow, but it may not matter which
programmer clicked the button to start the workflow while it would
matter a lot which researcher told the programmer to do so. So there
@@ -528,7 +527,7 @@
validate the execution as represented in the provenance record, to
manage expectation failures, or to provide explanations.</p>
-<div class="note">Proposal: remove the above para as it repeats from 2.3. Proposed text: "the <em>activity association</em> relation provides a way to indicate that an agent is responsible for an activity, possibly with an associated plan."[PM]</div>
+
<p>
@@ -553,13 +552,6 @@
A <dfn title="concept-responsibilityChain">responsibility chain</dfn> is a relation between two agents,
indicating that a "subordinate" agent acted on behalf of a "responsible" agent, in the context of an activity. The nature of this relation is intended to be broad, including delegation or a contractual relation.
</div>
-
-<div class="note">Propose to rephrase as follows: <br/>
-A relation between two agents, denoted <dfn title="concept-responsibilityChain">actedOnBehalfOf</dfn> indicates that
- that a "subordinate" agent acted on behalf of a "responsible" agent, in the context of an activity. The nature of this relation is intended to be broad, including delegation or a contractual relation.
- When this relation is used transitively, i.e., one agent acts on behalf of another, who also acts on behalf of another, etc., these relations form a <dfn title="concept-responsibilityChain">responsibility chain</dfn>.
-</div>
-
</p>
@@ -1444,7 +1436,7 @@
<ol>
<li>e1 and e2 refer to Bob in two contexts (as Facebook and Twitter users, respectively)
- <li> both of e1 and e2 are more detailed then e3.
+ <li> both of e1 and e2 are more detailed then than e3.
</ol>
@@ -1602,7 +1594,7 @@
<p>An <dfn title="dfn-attribute">attribute</dfn> is a <a>qualified name</a>.
-<p>The PROV data model introduces a pre-defined set of attributes in the <a href="#prov-dm-namespace">PROV-DM namespace</a>, which we define below.
+<p>The PROV data model introduces a fixed set of attributes in the <a href="#prov-dm-namespace">PROV-DM namespace</a>, which we define below.
The interpretation of any attribute declared in another namespace is out of scope.</p>
<section id="term-attribute-role">
@@ -1927,14 +1919,10 @@
</div>
-<p>Further considerations:</p>
-<ul>
- <li>Traceability is more general than <a href="#Derivation-Relation">Derivation</a>.
-</ul>
<div class='note'>
- I propose to delete the following, given that this document does not mention inferences. [LM]
+ I propose to delete the following, given that this document does not mention inferences.
<p>Further considerations:</p>
<ul>
<li>Traceability is more general than <a href="#Derivation-Relation">Derivation</a>. This means that an assertion of the form: <span class="name">tracedTo(...,e2,e1,...)</span> can be inferred from an assertion of the form:
@@ -1944,8 +1932,6 @@
</ul>
</div>
-<div class="note">looking at the definition, there is something wrong. It's not true that e2 was neceaary for e1 (in the transitive case) and
-that e1 bears responsibility. [LM]</div>
</section>
@@ -2215,15 +2201,15 @@
descriptions that would not make sense: for instance, one could
express that an entity was used before it was generated, or that the
activity that generated an entity began its existence after the entity
-generation. A set of consistency constraints have been defined for PROV-DM and
+generation. A set of constraints have been defined for PROV-DM and
can be found in a companion specification [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]].
-They can be used by asserters as a guideline for composing provenance descriptions that are consistent, and
+They can be used by asserters as a guideline for composing provenance descriptions and
by implementers of reasoning engines. </li>
<li>
-<p> The example of <a href="#prov-dm-example">section 3</a> contains identifiers such as <span class="name"><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-prov-dm-20111215">tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215</a></span>, which denotes a specific version of a technical report. On the other hand, a URI such as <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-dm/">http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-dm/</a> points to the latest version of a document. One needs to ensure that provenance descriptions for the latter document remain valid as denoted resources change. </p>
+<p> The example of <a href="#prov-dm-example">section 3</a> contains identifiers such as <span class="name"><a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-prov-dm-20111215">tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215</a></span>, which denotes a specific version of a technical report. On the other hand, a URI such as <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-dm/">http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-dm/</a> points to the latest version of a document. One needs to be cautious about provenance descriptions for the latter document, to ensure that they remain valid as denoted resources change. </p>
<p>To this end, PROV-DM allows asserters to describe "<em>partial states</em>" of entities by means of attributes and associated values. Some further constraints apply to the use of these attributes, since the values associated with them are expected to remain unchanged for some period of time. The constraints associated to attributes are also specified in the companion specification [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]].</p>