PROV-DM: The PROV Data Model

PROV-DM, the PROV data model, is a data model for provenance that describes the entities, people and activities involved in producing a piece of data or thing. PROV-DM is structured in six components, dealing with: (1) entities and activities, and the time at which they were created, used, or ended; (2) agents bearing responsibility for entities that were generated and activities that happened; (3) derivations of entities from entities; (4) properties to link entities that refer to the same thing; (5) collections forming a logical structure for its members; (6) a simple annotation mechanism. This document introduces the provenance concepts found in PROV and defines PROV-DM types and relations. PROV data model is domain-agnostic, but is equipped with extensibility points allowing domain-specific information to be included. Two further documents complete the specification of PROV-DM. First, a companion document specifies the set of constraints that provenance descriptions should follow. Second, a separate document describes a provenance notation for expressing instances of provenance for human consumption; this notation is used in examples in this document.