W3C PROV
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W3C PROV is a family of standards for representing "provenance" in a common format. It describes **who** the data or artifact is, **what activity** it went through, and **which entity** it became. It is used for reliability assessment, reproducibility, auditing, and traceability of data systems. (W3C)
Core Concepts (3)
Entity: A "thing/data" at a given point in time.
Activity: Some kind of process or operation (can have a start/end time).
Agent: A person, organization, software, etc., involved in an Activity.
Typical relations: wasGeneratedBy, used, wasDerivedFrom, wasAttributedTo, wasAssociatedWith, actedOnBehalfOf. (W3C)
Specification Family (Which one do you read/use?)
PROV-PRIMER (Getting Started, This First) (W3C)
PROV-DM (Definition of Conceptual Model) (W3C)
PROV-N (human-readable notation) (W3C)
PROV-O (OWL2/RDF ontology, for Linked Data and SPARQL) (W3C)
PROV-XML (XML Schema), PROV-AQ (Get History API/Linking Guidelines), PROV-Constraints (Validity Constraints) (W3C)
PROV-JSON (not a W3C member submission or recommendation, but has examples of use in practice) (W3C)
Mini Example
PROV-N
code:provn
document
prefix ex <http://example.com/>
entity(ex:cleaned_csv)
entity(ex:raw_csv)
activity(ex:cleaning, 2025-09-01T12:00:00Z, 2025-09-01T12:05:00Z)
agent(ex:alice)
used(ex:cleaning, ex:raw_csv)
wasGeneratedBy(ex:cleaned_csv, ex:cleaning)
wasAssociatedWith(ex:cleaning, ex:alice)
wasAttributedTo(ex:cleaned_csv, ex:alice)
endDocument
(See PROV-N for syntax details; go to PROV-O below if you want to use it in RDF.) (W3C)
PROV-O（Turtle）
code:turtle
@prefix prov: <http://www.w3.org/ns/prov#> .
@prefix ex: <http://example.com/> .
ex:cleaned_csv a prov:Entity ;
prov:wasGeneratedBy ex:cleaning ;
prov:wasAttributedTo ex:alice .
ex:raw_csv a prov:Entity .
ex:cleaning a prov:Activity ;
prov:used ex:raw_csv ;
prov:startedAtTime "2025-09-01T12:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
prov:endedAtTime "2025-09-01T12:05:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
prov:wasAssociatedWith ex:alice .
ex:alice a prov:Agent .
(See PROV-O for vocabulary and modeling guidelines.) (W3C)
Practical Tips
If there is an RDF infrastructure, adopt PROV-O (easy to track and visualize with SPARQL). For lightweight client-to-client exchange, consider PROV-JSON/JSON-LD systems (but with different standard status). (W3C)
In the API design, PROV-AQ is used to link from the resource to the coming history and how to get it. (W3C)
If you are aware of consistency checks and logical reasoning, you satisfy the PROV-Constraints rule. (W3C)
Conversion/verification tools and libraries (e.g. PROV Toolbox for Java) are also available. (openprovenance.org)
If necessary, we will also cut together a minimum subset design and **schema (SHACL)** for your data model.
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