The W3C PROV Provenance Model

 

Luc Moreau

Co-chair of W3C Provenance Working Group

Warning: everything in this presentation is a DRAFT.

Thanks to Paul Groth, Paolo Missier, James Cheney, and the entire W3C Provenance Working Group

Talk Outline

• The W3C Working Group on Provenance
• An example of Provenance
• The PROV Data Model
• PROV-N, PROV-O, PROV-Constraints

Working Group Charter

Participants

What is PROV?

• PROV is a family of specifications that help define how to interchange provenance
  • PROV-PRIMER, a primer for the PROV data model
  • PROV-O, the PROV ontology, an OWL2 ontology allowing the mapping of PROV to RDF];
  • PROV-DM, the PROV data model for provenance
  • PROV-CONSTRAINTS, a set of constraints applying to the PROV data model;
  • PROV-N, a notation for provenance aimed at human consumption ;
  • PROV-AQ, the mechanisms for accessing and querying provenance
  • PROV-XML an XML schema for PROV

A Definition of Provenance

Interchange

The idea that a single way of representing and collecting provenance could be adopted internally by all systems does not seem to be realistic today.

Instead, a pragmatic approach is to consider a core data model for provenance that allows domain and application specific representations of provenance to be translated into such a data model and exchanged between systems.

Heterogeneous systems can then export their provenance into such a core data model, and applications that need to make sense of provenance in heterogeneous systems can then import it, process it, and reason over it.

Thus, the vision is that different provenance-aware systems natively adopt their own model for representing their provenance, but a core provenance data model can be readily adopted as a provenance interchange model across such systems.

Layered Model

Layered Model

Example

Example

Example (reports)

Example (activities)

Example (agent)

Example (plan)

Example (requests)

Example (usage)

Example (generation)

Example (derivation)

Example (association)

PROV Data Model Components

PROV Data Model Core

Relations at a Glance

PROV-DM Types and Relations

Component 1: Entities and Activities

Entity

Activity

Generation

Usage

Component 2: Derivations

Derivation

Component 3: Agents and Responsibility

Agent

Attribution

Association

Delegation

Influence

Influence

Component 4: Bundles

Bundle

Bundle Example

Component 5: Alternates

Alternate

Specialization

Mention

Mention Example

Component 6: Collections

Component 6: Collections Example

Component 6: Collections

The PROV Family: The PROV Notation

PROV-N: The PROV Notation

• A notation aimed at Human Consumption

  entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, [ prov:type='pr:RecsWD' ])
  

• Used in mapping data model to RDF (and XML)
• Used in providing semantics to data model

Example in PROV-N

entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018, [ prov:type='pr:RecsWD' ])
entity(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, [ prov:type='pr:RecsWD' ])
entity(pr:rec-advance,         [ prov:type='prov:Plan' ])


entity(ar1:0004, [ prov:type="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/01-transitions.html#transreq" %% xsd:anyURI ])
entity(ar2:0141, [ prov:type="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/01-transitions.html#pubreq" %% xsd:anyURI ])
entity(ar3:0111, [ prov:type="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/01-transitions.html#pubreq" %% xsd:anyURI ])


wasDerivedFrom(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215,tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018)


activity(ex:pub1,,,[prov:type="publish"])
activity(ex:pub2,,,[prov:type="publish"])


wasGeneratedBy(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111018, ex:pub1)
wasGeneratedBy(tr:WD-prov-dm-20111215, ex:pub2)

used(ex:pub1,ar1:0004)
used(ex:pub1,ar2:0141)
used(ex:pub2,ar3:0111)

agent(w3:Consortium, [ prov:type="Organization" ])

wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub1, w3:Consortium  @ pr:rec-advance)
wasAssociatedWith(ex:pub2, w3:Consortium  @ pr:rec-advance)

The PROV Family: PROV Constraints

Time

• Time is critical in the context of provenance
• Time can help corroborate provenance claims
• For instance, if an entity is claimed to be obtained by transforming another, then the latter must have existed before the former. If it is not the case, then there is something wrong with such a provenance claim
• Minimal time assumptions since provenance can be used in many contexts (standalone system, web, space)

Events

Constraints

Constraints (2)

Conclusion: Specifications