The document discusses the requirements for representing provenance in RDF. It outlines the work of the W3C Provenance Incubator Group to understand provenance needs. Key requirements include: (1) enabling identity management of RDF statements and resources, (2) representing how resources evolve over time, and (3) distinguishing between asserted and inferred provenance information. The document also examines existing techniques for modeling provenance and calls for standardized vocabularies to improve interoperability.

1. Provenance Requirements for the
Next Version of RDF
Christian Bizer Yolanda Gil
Jun Zhao Freie Universität ISI, University of
University of Oxford Berlin Southern California
Satya Sahoo
Paolo Missier Kno.e.sis Center,
University of Manchester Wright State University
W3C Provenance Incubator Group

2. Outline
● Background
● Gathering provenance requirements
● From both user and technical perspectives
● From three dimensions: content, management and use
● Requirement to RDF
● Further information

3. The W3C Provenance Incubator Group
● http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/
● Formed in September 2009 as part of the W3C
Semantic Web Activity
● Aim to provide
● A state-of-the art understanding, and
● A roadmap in the area of provenance for Semantic Web
technologies, development, and possible
standardization

4. A Definition of Web Provenance
The initial sources of information used as well
as any entity and process involved in
producing a data item
The data can be any web resource: a document,
an image, a dataset, an RDF statement or a set
of RDF graphs, ....

5. The Importance of Provenance

6. The Importance of Provenance

7. The Key Idea
● We require additional capabilities that the current
standard RDF model does not offer
● Identity management of RDF statements
● Annotation framework
● ....
● For interoperability we require standardized
vocabularies and best practices for provenance
descriptions

8. Where do our requirements come from?

9. Activities So Far
● Collected >30 provenance use cases
● Defined provenance dimensions
● Content: attribution, evolution, process, entailment, etc
● Management: publication, access, scalability, etc
● Use: interoperability, trust, understanding, debugging, etc
● A provenance requirement document
● Three flagship use cases
● http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/User_Requirements
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Provenance_Dimensions

10. What are the requirements?

11. Requirements from Provenance Content:
What Needs to Be Represented
Requirement 1: Identity
● Ability to refer to the resource being described
● An area of an image, an RDF graph, a set of RDF graphs...
● Resolving equality
Requirement 2: Evolution
● How different versions are related
● What transformations were applied
● Best practices for minting new URIs

12. Requirements from Provenance Content:
What Needs to Be Represented
Requirement 3: Entailment
● Represent the distinction between asserted versus
inferred provenance

13. Requirements from Provenance
Management
Requirement 4: Publication
● Linking provenance assertions with the resource
● How to publish provenance: embed or link?
● Associate publisher’s identification (e.g., digital
signature)
Requirement 5: Querying
● Query formulation: may mix references to the resource
and to its provenance
● Efficient query execution

14. Requirements from Provenance Use
● No requirements were uncovered

15. State of the Art
● Extension/alternatives to RDF models
● RDF reification
– Querying is cumbersome
– Others ...
● Named Graphs
● OWL annotations
● RDF molecules, Temporal RDF, PaCE Model ....
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Relevant_Technologies

16. State of the Art (Cont.)
● Vocabularies/ontologies to express provenance
information
● The Open Provenance Model (OPM)
● Inference Web - Open Proof Language (PML)
● The Provenance Vocabulary
● Dublin Core
● Open Archives Initiative - Object Reuse and Exchange (OAI-ORE)
● Semantic Web Publishing Vocabulary
● The SWAN-SIOC alignment
● The Changeset Vocabulary
● ....... http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Relevant_Technologies

17. Provenance Requirements to the
RDF Community
● Identification
● Of any artifact, be a resource, a single RDF statement,
a set of RDF statements or Web resources
● Identity management
● Annotations of RDF graphs
● Standardized schemata, ontologies and vocabularies

18. Activities Ongoing
● Mapping key terms from various provenance-related
vocabularies
● Report on the state-of-the-art in the area of
provenance

19. See Also
● The incubator group:
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/
● Provenance requirement document:
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/User_Req
uirements
● Mapping provenance-related vocabularies:
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/wiki/Provenanc
e_Vocabulary_Mappings

20. Special thanks to members and invited experts of the
W3C Provenance Incubator Group and UK EPSRC
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