Provenance in Databases: Principles and Applications

Data provenance is extra information computed during query evaluation over databases, which provides additional context about query results. Several formal frameworks for data provenance have been proposed, in particular based on provenance semirings. The provenance of a query can be computed in these frameworks for a variety of query languages. Provenance has applications in various settings, such as probabilistic databases, view maintenance, or explanation of query results. Though the theory of provenance semirings has mostly been developed in the setting of relational databases, it can also apply to other data representations, such as XML, graph, and triple-store databases.