This presentation offers a brief introduction to provenance, a record of the process that led to the current state of an object, based on a new descriptive model designed to allow provenance information to be exchanged between systems, the Open Provenance Model (OPM). It was given as part of module 3 of a 5-module course on digital preservation tools for repository managers, presented by the JISC KeepIt project. For more on this and other presentations in this course look for the tag 'KeepIt course' in the project blog http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/keepit/

1. Brief Introduction to Provenance
"As data becomes plentiful, verifiable truth becomes scarce”
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/02/named-graphs-argleton-and-
truth-economy.html
For JISC KeepItcourse on Digital Preservation Tools for Repository Managers
Module 3, Primer on preservation workflow, formats and characterisation
Westminster-Kingsway College, London, 2 March 2010

2. Provenance: example
The following excerpt and slides are taken with permission from Moreau, L.
The Open Provenance Model:Towards inter-operability of Provenance
Systems http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/lavm/talks/iam09.pdf
Example The provenance of a bottle of wine includes:
• Grapes from which it is made
• Where those grapes grew
• Process in the wine’s preparation
• How the wine was stored
• Between which parties the wine was transported,
e.g. producer to distributer to retailer
• Where it was auctioned

3. Provenance Definition
• Oxford English Dictionary:
– the fact of coming from some particular source or quarter;
origin, derivation
– the historyor pedigree of a work of art, manuscript, rare
book, etc.;
– concretely, a record of the passage
of an item through its various
owners.
• The provenance of a piece of data is the
process that led to that piece of data

4. The Science Lifecycle
scientists
Local
Web
Repositories
Graduate
Students
Undergraduate
Students
Virtual Learning
Environment
Technical
Reports
Reprints
Peer-
Reviewed
Journal &
Conference
Papers
Preprints
&
Metadata
Certified
Experimental Results
& Analyses
experimentation
Data, Metadata,
Provenance, Scripts,
Workflows, Services,
Ontologies, Blogs, ...
Digital
Libraries
Next Generation
Researchers
Adapted from David De Roure’s slides

5. scientists
Local
Web
Repositories
Graduate
Students
Undergraduate
Students
Virtual Learning
Environment
Technical
Reports
Reprints
Peer-
Reviewed
Journal &
Conference
Papers
Preprints
&
Metadata
Certified
Experimental Results
& Analyses
experimentation
Data, Metadata,
Provenance, Scripts,
Workflows, Services,
Ontologies, Blogs, ...
Digital
Libraries
Next Generation
Researchers
Finding the Provenance
of research outputs
across all the systems
data transited through

6. Open Provenance Model (OPM)
• Allows us to express all the causes of an item
• Allow for process-oriented and dataflow
oriented views
• Based on a notion of annotated causality
graph
Moreau, L., et al. v1.00 (Dec 2007), OPM v1.01
(Jul 2008), OPM v1.1 (Dec 2009)

7. OPM Requirements
• To allow provenance information to be
exchanged between systems, by means of a
compatibility layer based on a shared provenance
model.
• To allow developers to build and share tools that
operate on such provenance model.
• To define the model in a precise, technology-
agnostic manner.
• To define bindings to XML/RDF separately
• To support a digital representation of provenance
for any “thing”, whether produced by computer
systems or not

8. OPM Serialisation
• OPM is an abstract data model to represent past
execution and what causes data and processes to occur
• OPM can be serialised in different formats, referred to
as “technology bindings” or serializations
• OPM XML schema
(http://openprovenance.org/model/v1.01.a)
• OPM RDF schema
• OPM OWL ontology
• Effort underway to ensure full equivalence of
representations

9. Nodes
• Artifact: Immutable piece of state, which
may have a physical embodiment in a
physical object, or a digital
representation in a computer system.
• Process: Action or series of actions
performed on or caused by artifacts, and
resulting in new artifacts.
• Agent: Contextual entity acting as a
catalyst of a process, enabling,
facilitating, controlling, affecting its
execution.
A
P
Ag

10. Edges
A1 A2
P1 P2
wasTriggeredBy
wasDerivedFrom
A Pused(R)
AP
wasGeneratedBy(R)
Ag P
wasControlledBy(R)
Edge labels are in the past to express that these are used to describe past executions

11. Illustration
• Process “used” artifacts and
“generated” artifact
• Edge “roles” indicate the
function of the artifact with
respect to the process (akin
to function parameters)
• Edges and nodes can be
typed
Causation chain:
• P was caused by A1 and A2
• A3 and A4 were caused by P
• Does it mean that A3 and A4
were caused by A1 and A2?
P
A1 A2
A3 A4
used(divisor)used(dividend)
wasGeneratedBy(rest)wasGeneratedBy(quotient)
type=division

12. Time Constraints
A Pused(R)
A
wasGeneratedBy(R)
Ag
wasControlledBy(R)
start: T2
end: T5
T4T3
T1<T3 (artifact must exist before being used)
T2<T3 (process must have started before using artifacts)
T3<T5 (process uses artifacts before it ends)
T2<T4 (process must have started before generating artifacts)
T4<T5 (process generates artifacts before it ends)
T4<T6 (artifact must exist before being used)
T2<T5 (process must have started before ending)
no constraint between t3 and t4
wasGeneratedBy(R)
T1
used(R)
T6

13. Dublin Core Profile (draft)
• To many people, provenance is primarily
about attribution, citation, bibliographic
information
• DC provides terms to relate resources to such
information
• DC profile aims to use of Dublin Core terms to
OPM concepts and graph patterns
with Simon Miles and Joe Futrelle

14. DC to OPM example: dc:publisher
A2
A1
P
publish
wasSameResourceAs
state=published
Ag
wasActionOf
state=unpublished
person
name=Luc wasGeneratedBy

15. What have we learned about
provenance?
• Provenance: describes and records the results of
processes on objects over time
• OPM represents provenance as XML
• OPM can be serialised in different formats
• RDF, Semantic Web
• OPM is a work in progress
By working with an open standard model, that can
pass information as XML and in standard serialisation
formats (e.g. RDF), it should be possible to build
provenance services into repository environments