Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 608Cite as

Data Provenance

  • Reference work entry

Synonyms

Provenance metadata; Data lineage; Data tracking; Data pedigree

Definition

The term “data provenance” refers to a record trail that accounts for the origin of a piece of data (in a database, document or repository) together with an explanation of how and why it got to the present place.

Example: In an application like Molecular Biology, a lot of data is derived from public databases, which in turn might be derived from papers but after some transformations (only the most significant data were put in the public database), which are derived from experimental observations. A provenance record will keep this history for each piece of data.

Key Points

Databases today do not have a good way of managing provenance data and the subject is an active research area. One category of provenance research focuses on the case where one database derives some of its data by querying another database, and one may try to “invert” the query to determine which input data elements contribute to this...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   2,500.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Bose R. and Frew J. Lineage retrieval for scientific data processing: a survey. ACM Comput. Surv., 37(1):1–28, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Buneman P., Khanna S., Tajima K., and Tan W.-C. Archiving scientific data. In Proc. ACM SIGMOD Conf. on Management of Data, 2002, pp. 1–12.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Buneman P., Khanna S., and Tan W.C. On propagation of deletions and annotations through views. In Proc. 21st ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symp. on Principles of Database Systems, 2002, pp. 150–158.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Simmhan Y.L., Plale B., and Gannon D. A Survey of Data Provenance Techniques. Technical Report TR618, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Widom J. Trio: A System for Integrated Management of Data, Accuracy, and Lineage. In Proc. 2nd Biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research, 2005, pp. 262–276.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA

    Amarnath Gupta

Authors
  1. Amarnath Gupta
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, 266 Ferst Drive, 30332-0765, Atlanta, GA, USA

    LING LIU (Professor) (Professor)

  2. Database Research Group David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. TAMER ÖZSU (Professor and Director, University Research Chair) (Professor and Director, University Research Chair)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry

Gupta, A. (2009). Data Provenance. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1305

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation