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Provenance is defined as a record that describes the people, institutions, entities, and activities, involved in producing, influencing, or delivering a piece of data or a thing in the world. Two companion specifications respectively define PROV-DM, a data model for provenance, allowing such descriptions to be expressed [[PROV-DM]] and a set of constraints that provenance descriptions are expectively to satisfy [[PROV-DM-CONSTRAINTS]].
In this context, PROV-ASN was introduced as a notation to write instances of the data model, as close to its abstract syntax as possible. PROV-ASN is primarily aimed at human consumption. PROV-ASN allows serializations of PROV-DM instances to be written in a technology independent manner. So far, PROV-ASN has been used in the following ways:
PROV-ASN was designed to be as close as possible to PROV-DM without the syntactic bias and modelling constraints that concrete technologies bring with them, e.g., XML's choice between attribute and element, RDF's reliance on triples, or JSON's usage of dictionaries.
The purpose of this document is solely to define the syntax of PROV-ASN. For each construct of PROV-DM, a corresponding ASN expression is introduced, by way of a production in the PROV-ASN grammar presented in this document.
This specification is one of several specifications, referred to as the PROV family of specifications, defining the various aspects that are necessary to achieve the vision of inter-operable exchange of provenance:
The PROV-DM namespace is http://www.w3.org/ns/prov-dm/ (TBC).
All the elements, relations, reserved names and attributes introduced in this specification belong to the PROV-DM namespace.
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [[!RFC2119]].
This specification includes a grammar for PROV-ASN expressed using the Extended Backus-Naur Form (EBNF) notation.
Each production rule (or production, for short) in the grammar defines one non-terminal symbol, in the form:
E ::= expression
Within the expression on the right-hand side of a rule, the following expressions are used to match strings of one or more characters:Instances of the PROV-DM data model are expressed in PROV-ASN by a text conformant with the toplevel production expression of the grammar. These expressions are grouped in two categories: elementExpression (see section Element) and relationExpression (see section Relation).
PROV-DM elements can be entities, activities, agents, or notes. This section defines a production for the textual representation of each of these element types.
An entity's text matches the entityExpression production.
entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215) entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, [ prov:type="document" ]) entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, [ prov:type="document", ex:version=2 ])
An activity's text matches the activityExpression production.
activity(ex:edit1,,) activity(ex:edit1,,,[prov:type="edit"]) activity(ex:a0, 2011-11-16T16:00:00,,[prov:type="createFile"]) activity(ex:a0, 2011-11-16T16:00:00, 2011-11-16T16:00:01, [prov:type="createFile"])
An agent's text matches the agentExpression production.
agent(ag4) agent(ag4, [ prov:type="prov:Human" %% xsd:QName, ex:name="David" ])
A note's text matches the noteExpression production.
note(ann1,[ex:color="blue", ex:screenX=20, ex:screenY=30])
PROV-DM relations can be generation, usage, derivation, activity association, responsibility chain, activity start, activity end, alternate, specialization, or annotations. This section defines a production for the textual representation of each of these relation types.
A generation's text matches the generationExpression production.
wasGeneratedBy(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, ex:edit1) wasGeneratedBy(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, ex:edit1, 2011-11-16T16:00:00) wasGeneratedBy(ex:g1, tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, ex:edit1) wasGeneratedBy(e2, a1, [ex:fct="save"])
A usage's text matches the usageExpression production.
used(ex:pub2, ar3:0111) used(ex:pub2, ar3:0111, 2011-11-16T16:00:00) used(ex:u1, ex:pub2, ar3:0111) used(a1,e1,[ex:fct="load"])
An activity association's text matches the activityAssociationExpression productions of the grammar defined in this specification document.
wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub2, w3:Consortium) wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub2, w3:Consortium @ pr:rec-advance) wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub2, w3:Consortium @ pr:rec-advance, [prov:role="funder"])
Activity start and end texts match the startExpression and endExpression productions of the grammar defined in this specification document.
actedOnBehalfOf(ag1,ag2) actedOnBehalfOf(ag1,ag2,a) actedOnBehalfOf(ag1,ag2,[prov:type="delegation"]) actedOnBehalfOf(ag2,ag3,a,[prov:type="contract"])
A derivation record's text matches the derivationExpression production.
The first clause of the alternative, where the activity, generation and usage record identifiers are present formalizes a derivation record is precise-1. The second clause of the alternative, with optional time formalizes imprecise records. The distinction between imprecise-1 and imprecise-n is made by the attribute prov:steps.
wasDerivedFrom(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018) wasDerivedFrom(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018) wasDerivedFrom(e2, e1, a, g2, u1)
An alternate relation's text matches the alternateExpression production.
alternateOf(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215,ex:alternate-20111215)
A specialization relation's text matches the specializationExpressionproduction.
specializationOf(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215,tr:prov-dm)
A note's text matches the noteExpression production.
hasAnnotation(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215,ex2:n1)
In PROV-ASN, the prefix prov is reserved and denotes the PROV namespace.
An attribute's text matches the attribute production.
The reserved attributes in the PROV namespace are the following.
A Literal's text matches the Literal production.
The non terminals stringLiteral and intLiteral are syntactic sugar for quoted strings with datatype xsd:string and xsd:int, respectively.
In particular, a PROV-DM Literal may be an IRI-typed string (with datatype xsd:anyURI); such IRI has no specific interpretation in the context of PROV-DM.
The reserved type values in the PROV namespace are the following.
Time instants are defined according to xsd:dateTime [[!XMLSCHEMA-2]].
An expression container is a house-keeping construct of PROV-ASN capable of packaging up PROV-ASN expressions and namespace declarations. An expression container forms a self-contained package of provenance descriptions for the purpose of exchanging them. An expression container may be used to package up PROV-ASN expressions in response to a request for the provenance of something ([[PROV-AQ]]).
Given its status of house keeping construct for the purpose of exchanging provenance expressions, an expression container is not defined as a PROV-ASN expression (production expression).
An expression container, written container decls exprs endContainer in PROV-ASN, contains:
An expression container's text matches the expressionContainer production.
The following container contains expressions related to the provenance of entity e2.
container prefix ex: http://example.org/, entity(e2, [ prov:type="File", ex:path="/shared/crime.txt", ex:creator="Alice", ex:content="There was a lot of crime in London last month."]) activity(a1, 2011-11-16T16:05:00,,[prov:type="edit"]) wasGeneratedBy(e2, a1, [ex:fct="save"]) wasAssociatedWith(a1, ag2, [prov:role="author"]) agent(ag2, [ prov:type="prov:Person" %% xsd:QName, ex:name="Bob" ]) endContainer
This container could for instance be returned as the result of a query to a provenance store for the provenance of entity e2 [[PROV-AQ]].
PROV-DM has introduced a notion of account by which a set of provenance descriptions can be bundled up and named. PROV-DM assumes the existence of mechanisms to implement accounts, but such mechanisms remain outside its scope. It is suggested that specific serializations may offer solutions to name bundles of descriptions.
Given that the primary motivation for PROV-ASN is to provide a notation aimed at human consumption, it is therefore appropriate to introduce a notation for accounts, which would include an account name and a bundle of expressions.
An account, written account(id, exprs) in PROV-ASN, contains:
In PROV-ASN, an account's text matches the accountExpression production of the grammar.
It is also useful to package up one or more account expressions in an expression container, for interchange purpose. Hence, expressionContainer is revised as follows.
The following container
container prefix ex: http://example.org/, account(ex:acc1,...) account(ex:acc2,...) endContainer
illustrates how two accounts with identifiers ex:acc1 and ex:acc2 can be returned in a PROV-ASN serialization of the provenance of something.
The following container
container prefix ex: http://example.org/, ... account(ex:acc1, entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018, [ prov:type="pr:RecsWD" %% xsd:QName ]) entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, [ prov:type="pr:RecsWD" %% xsd:QName ]) ... wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub2, w3:Consortium @ pr:rec-advance)) account(ex:acc2, entity(ex:acc1, [prov:type="prov:AccountEntity" %% xsd:QName ]) wasAttributedTo(ex1:acc1,w3:Consortium)) endContainer
illustrates a first account, with identifier ex:acc1, containing expressions describing the provenance of the technical report tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, and a second account ex:acc2, describing the provenance of the first. In account ex:acc2, ex:acc1 is the identifier of an entity of type prov:AccountEntity.