The requirements of recording and using provenance in e-Science experiments

Miles, S., Groth, P., Branco, M. and Moreau, L. (2005) The requirements of recording and using provenance in e-Science experiments. Technical Report UNSPECIFIED, Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. (Submitted)

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Abstract

In e-Science experiments, it is vital to record the experimental process for later use such as in interpreting results, verifying that the correct process took place or tracing where data came from. The documentation of a process that led to some data is called the provenance of that data, and a provenance architecture is the software architecture for a system that will provide the necessary functionality to record, store and use provenance data. However, there has been little principled analysis of what is actually required of a provenance architecture, so it is impossible to determine the functionality they would ideally support. In this paper, we present use cases for a provenance architecture from current experiments in biology, chemistry, physics and computer science, and analyse the use cases to determine the technical requirements of a generic, application-independent architecture. We propose an architecture that meets these requirements and evaluate a preliminary implementation by attempting to realise one of the use cases.

Creators:	Simon Miles, Paul Groth, Miguel Branco, Luc Moreau
Item Type:	Technical Report
Keywords:	provenance, e-Science, requirements, use cases, Web Services, service-oriented architectures
Research Group:	Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia
Deposited On:	13 Jan 2005 by Miles, Simon
ID Code:	10269
Last Modified:	11 Nov 2009 12:21
Performance Indicator:	EZ~04~04~06