Kepler Scientific Workflow System - Provenance

Provenance

Provenance is a critical concept in scientific workflows, since it allows scientists to understand the origin of their results, to repeat their experiments, and to validate the processes that were used to derive data products. In order for a workflow to be reproduced, provenance information must be recorded that indicates where the data originated, how it was altered, and which components and what parameter settings were used. This will allow other scientists to re-conduct the experiment, confirming the results. Little support exists in current systems to allow end-users to query provenance information in scientifically meaningful ways, in particular when advanced workflow execution models go beyond simple DAGs (as in process networks).