Definition of Provenance

Common Sense Definition of Provenance

We first introduce the common sense definition of the word ‘provenance’.

Its etymology is the French verb ‘provenir’, which means to come forth, originate. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, provenance is defined as (i) the fact of coming from some particular source or quarter; origin, derivation. (ii) the history or pedigree of a work of art, manuscript, rare book, etc.; concr., a record of the ultimate derivation and passage of an item through its various owners.

Likewise, the Merriam-Webster Online dictionary defines provenance as (i) the origin, source; (ii) the history of ownership of a valued object or work of art or literature.

From such definitions, we can distinguish two meanings for provenance: first, as a concept, it denotes the source or derivation of an object; second, more concretely, it is used to refer to a record of such a derivation. We will come back to such a distinction when we define the notion of provenance we adopt in this project.

Project Definition of Provenance

The provenance of a piece of data is the process that led to the data.

Referring to the two common sense definitions of provenance, we note that such a definition is concerned with provenance as a concept. Ultimately, our aim is to conceive a computer-based representation of provenance that allows us to perform useful analysis and reasoning to support our use cases. The provenance of a piece of data will be represented in a computer system by some suitable documentation of the process that led to the data. While our applications will specify the form that such a documentation should take, we can identify several of its general properties. Documentation can be complete or partial (for instance, when the computation has not terminated yet); it can be accurate or inaccurate; it can present conflicting or consensual views of the actors involved; it can be detailed or not.
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