A Provenance Tracking Model for Data Updates

• Main Authors: Ciobanu, Gabriel, Horne, Ross
• Other Authors: School of Computer Engineering
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/80955; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/39009
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

For data-centric systems, provenance tracking is particularly important when the system is open and decentralised, such as the Web of Linked Data. In this paper, a concise but expressive calculus which models data updates is presented. The calculus is used to provide an operational semantics for a system where data and updates interact concurrently. The operational semantics of the calculus also tracks the provenance of data with respect to updates. This provides a new formal semantics extending provenance diagrams which takes into account the execution of processes in a concurrent setting. Moreover, a sound and complete model for the calculus based on ideals of series-parallel DAGs is provided. The notion of provenance introduced can be used as a subjective indicator of the quality of data in concurrent interacting systems.