Provenance DM WD review - invalidatedAtTime description

[Ole Streicher]

Hi Mathieu,

On 11.07.19 11:59, Mathieu Servillat wrote:
> you nicely illustrate the confusion I pointed out: you are in fact
> referring to the "validity of the usage" of an entity (not in the scope
> of the DM document, and probably better called applicability),
> while invalidatedAtTime is about the "validity of the entity"
> independently from any usage.

All examples that appeared so far are of kind "mark the entity invalid",
meaning "make them forbidden for [regular] processing". Like superceding
a data file with a newer version that must be used from now on instead
of the old one.

Can you bring an example from our domain where one wants to mark a
(previously valid) entity in a way that it makes it unavailable for
*any* processing (including f.e. housekeeping, statistics, debugging or
reproducibility), but not just removing it?

For example, invalidation IMO implies that the file cannot be downloaded
anymore. If one keeps the file for download, one obviously would want to
have the chance to use it somehow later (maybe even for collecting the
history or so). How would a file be downloadable but "invalid
independently from any usage"?

> This sentence is factually wrong, so it would be wiser to find an
> alternative, the obvious one being to stick to the W3C PROV definition
> and express specific applied cases in your implementation note. Maybe
> you have another proposition?

I would actually prefer to return to destructionTime as this is less
confusing, but we can also stick with the current one (and explain it):

invalidatedAtTime | date and time of the destruction of the entity. The
entity is no longer available for use. This does not
relate to the validity of the entity¹.

with the footnote

¹ The attribute name was chosen to stick to the corresponding W3C
attribute name.

Best regards

Ole