Software Agent

https://publicschema.org/SoftwareAgent

draft

A software product or system that performed a step in a delivery process, such as a scoring engine that computed a proxy means test score or a rule engine that evaluated eligibility. SoftwareAgent records the identity and version of the software so that a result can be reproduced or audited later. SoftwareAgent is a subtype of Agent, alongside Person and Organization. It is distinct from the Person or Organization accountable for the action (recorded in properties such as performed_by or evaluator) and from an Instrument (the questionnaire or measurement tool administered to a subject).

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Supertypes

Agent

Properties

Property	Type	Definition
Name	`string`	The full display name of the record. Depending on the concept, this is a person's or group's name, or the title of a program, instrument, scoring rule, or software product.
Version	`string`	The version identifier of an artefact such as an instrument, software agent, scoring rule, or privacy notice (for example, a release date such as 2022-10-11 or a semantic version like 6.2).
Publisher	`concept:Agent` includes Person, Organization, SoftwareAgent	The agent that publishes or maintains the instrument, software agent, or scoring rule. Typically an Organization (for example, the Washington Group on Disability Statistics, UNICEF, the SMART initiative, the openIMIS Initiative, or a national statistics office), but may be a named Person for standards methodologies and individual research publications. A SoftwareAgent is not expected to appear here: the publisher of a SoftwareAgent record is the Person or Organization that publishes the software, not another piece of software. The type system admits SoftwareAgent via the Agent supertype, but that case is excluded by convention.
Publication URL	`uri`	A canonical URL where the instrument, software agent, or scoring rule is published (typically a documentation page, a source repository, or a PDF hosted by the publisher).

Evidence

Not yet found in mapped delivery systems.

No mapped system currently models scoring engines or rule engines as structured entities. Software identity is typically left implicit or stored as a free-text log entry, which makes audit and reproducibility difficult.

Standard	Equivalent	Match
PROV-O	SoftwareAgent	exact
Direct W3C PROV-O equivalent: a software agent that played a role in an activity. Our SoftwareAgent is scoped to recording the software that acted within a public delivery process.
FOAF	Agent	broad
foaf:Agent is the broad supertype covering persons, organisations, and software. SoftwareAgent is narrower: software specifically. Our Agent concept is the local peer for foaf:Agent and is the shared supertype of Person, Organization, and SoftwareAgent.

Referenced by this concept

FOAF FOAF Project, 2014
PROV-O World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2013

See full reference catalogue