Interoperable Logging WAS: Re: [topicmapmail] Questions AboutXTMOccurrence Semantics

[Dmitry]

From: "Peter P. Jones"
> I'm not sure I understand that properly.
> Is it like:
> Top level - topics for TM item constructs: topic item, association item, occurrence item...etc.
> Then occurrences of those top level topics refer to particular items in e.g. user topic map.

Yes, it is one way to do it. I personally prefer to talk about "domain" topic map and "provenance" topic map.
Domain topic map has topics for such things as people, companies, web sites etc.
Provenance topic maps has topics for "information items" from domain topic map. And we use "provenance"
occurrence and associations to make different provenance assertions.

For example, domain topic map http://.......com/topic_map can have a "domain" level assertion: full_name(JohnSmith,'John Smith')
We can assign item identifier to this assertion
full_name(JohnSmith,'John Smith') -> http://.......com/topic_map/#0000000121211284234
(it is not a reification

Now we can reference this item identifier URL outside of domain topic map. So now in our provinance topic map we can create a topic 
for domain assertion and create provinance assertions

source_of_information('http://.......com/topic_map/#0000000121211284234', 'http://.......com/topic_map/')
created_at('http://.......com/topic_map/#0000000121211284234', 2007-03-03T18:30:25)
merged_with('http://.......com/topic_map/','http://.......com/other_topic_map/')
same_as('http://.......com/topic_map/#0000000121211284234', 'http://.......com/other_topic_map/#21128423454588989845')

Most of known topic map engines allow to define event handlers for main events in a topic map. These events can be used to update
"provenance" topic map. For example, we can define event handler for merging information items. In this case 'same_as' assertion can 
be created automatically in this event handler.

I guess it is interesting to share some ideas  about "provenance" ontologies that are used by different  projects.


Dmitry