Provenance Tracking and End-User Oriented Query Construction

Abstract

Provenance tracking is an indispensable element of each e-Science infrastructure for conducting in silico experiments. However, enabling end-users who are non-IT experts to query provenance and experiment data in a meaningful way is equally important. The authors propose an ontology-based provenance model which captures the execution of in silico experiments, as well as domain-specific semantics of data and computations used in those experiments. They demonstrate how ontologies can serve as inter-lingua for end-users, provenance tracking system, and query tools. Query Translation Tools (QUaTRO), enabling end-user oriented, ontology-guided visual querying over provenance records and experiment data, are also presented. In those tools, they also show how the ontology models enable semantic information integration of provenance metadata and experiment data, enabling queries capable of exploring the structure of provenance and associated experiment data. Their approach is demonstrated on a Drug Resistance application deployed in the ViroLab Project.