Data Provenance

Book excerpt: The term provenance is used in the art world to describe a record of the history of ownership of a piece of art. This term has been adapted by the database community to describe a record of the origin of a piece of data. Data provenance emerged as a research topic in the database community in the late 1990s. Data provenance, by explaining how the result of an operation was derived from its inputs, has proven to be a useful tool that is applicable in a wide variety of applications. This monograph gives a comprehensive introduction to data provenance concepts, algorithms, and methodology developed in the last few decades. It introduces the reader to the formalisms, algorithms, and system's developments in this fascinating field as well as providing a collection of relevant literature references for further research. The monograph provides a concise starting point for research into and using provenance in data. Although focusing on data provenance in databases pointers to work in other fields are given throughout. The intended audience is researchers and practitioners unfamiliar with the topic who want to develop a basic understanding of provenance techniques and the state-of-the-art in the field as well as researchers with prior experience in provenance that want to broaden their horizon.