DTV11 — SBVR Convention issues in DTV

SBVR experts:

In the Date Time Vocabulary v1.0 specification, clause 16.5 contains the following terminological entry:

individual situation kind has occurrence interval

Definition: the occurrence interval is the time span of the individual situation kind

Necessity: The individual situation kind has exactly one occurrence

Note: The time span of an individual situation kind is exactly the occurrence interval of its only occurrence.

Example: The occurrence interval of the Great Fire of London was 2 September 1666 through 5 September 1666 (English old style calendar).

The technical aspects of this are not at issue. An ‘individual situation kind’ (state of affairs) can have at most one occurrence. An occurrence (actuality) has exactly one ‘occurrence interval’ – the time interval during which it is occurring. And any situation kind can have a ‘time span’ – the smallest time interval that includes all occurrences of the situation kind. (If it never occurs, it may have No time span.)

There are two SBVR “style” problems here.

First, the Definition of the verb concept is (appropriately) a sentence involving the placeholders, but the first character of the sentence is not capitalized. By convention in SBVR, the first character of a Definition is not capitalized, and this is also true of example sentences in SBVR v1.2, e.g., in clause 8.2.2. The question is: Which convention – English or SBVR – is appropriate here? Or do we even care?

Second, and more importantly, the intent of the above Necessity is: If an individual situation kind has an occurrence interval, the individual situation kind has exactly one occurrence. But the text above omits the antecedent. Instead, it assumes that ‘the individual situation kind’ refers to whatever plays the ‘individual situation kind’ role in an instance of the verb concept (wording). Is it the intent of SBVR that such an omission is valid in this context (the terminological entry)? Or is the antecedent required (to establish the context of an instance of the verb concept)?

The considered opinion of the SBVR RTF will dictate the nature of any related changes to this entry in the DTV.

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