PLIER: Provenance Layer Infrastructure for e-Science Resources

PLIER is being developed by the Information Management Group within the Big Grid project. PLIER provides an implementation of the Open Provenance Model (OPM), and hides the details of handling and managing the provenance when executing workflows. Its API allows the developers to build, store and share (by XML serialization) graphs using the OPM model.
Three main components constitutes the Plier API:

1. Implementing the most optimum OPM relational database schema,
2. Using the Plier API to build the OPM object and store them into the database,
3. Using the PlierToolBox to manipulate and share OPM data and graphs,

1. Implementing the OPM relational database schema: OPMRDB

PLIER provides the most optimal OPM database schema for relational DBMSs. The DDL script to create the database schema for 'MySQL', is available at: OpmDDL.
Figure 1 illustrate the Entity Relationship diagram for OPM as designed and implemented within PLIER. A more detailed description of the database schema implementation, illustrated with graphs, is available at: http://www.nikhef.nl/~ammarb/OPMRDB/

Figure 1. ER Diagram for OPM Relational Schema

2. Using the Plier API to build the OPM object and store them into the database

1. Step-by-step example illustrating how to create and store OPM data, using Plier API: OpmDBTest
2. Complete java source code example (using Plier API): OpmDBTestSample
3. Technical Details: Plier API is deploying most recent standards and mechanisms to implement the OPM database and to interface with it.
   1. PLIER provides the most optimal OPM database schema for relational DBMSs (OpmDDL)
   2. JDO 3.1 is used as a java-centric API to access persistent data,
   3. DataNucleus is used as a reference implementation of the JDO API,
   4. Event mechanism in OPM is enhanced within PLIER, to better support traceability and debugging (see OpmEvents in Plier).

3. Using the Plier Toolbox to manipulate and share OPM data and graphs

PlierToolBox is a java-based application that allows the scientists to explore and share their OPM data in a user-friendly manner. It facilitates the navigation and exploration through scientific-workflow data with potentials for graphical visualization and sharing.

• Download the latest version of Plier Toolbox.

More details ...

4. Download Plier API:

1. Download the latest version of Plier Core API.

-- AmmarBenabdelkader - 16 Jun 2011
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