SWPM-2009

The First International Workshop on the role of Semantic Web in Provenance Management
(Co-located with the 8th International Semantic Web Conference ISWC-2009, October 25-29, 2008 Washington, DC)

Objectives

The growing eScience infrastructure is enabling scientists to generate scientific data on an industrial scale [1]. Similarly, the Web 2.0 paradigm is enabling Web users to create focused applications that combine data from multiple sources, popularly referred to as “mashups”, on an extremely large scale [2]. The importance of managing various forms of apparently ancillary metadata, in addition to the primary data products of eScience, is increasingly being recognized as critical for the correct interpretation of the data. In this proposal we focus specifically on metadata that describes the origins of the data, as well as the tools used to generate and process it, the “shelf-life” of the data, and more.

The term provenance, from the French word “provenir” meaning “to come from", describes the lineage, or origins, of a data entity. Provenance metadata is required to correctly interpret the results of a process execution, to validate data processing tools, to verify the quality of data, and to associate measures of trust to the data. The scale at which data across different domains (biomedical informatics [3],[4], astronomy [5], oceanography [6], and Web-mashups [2]) is created and processed, mandates the use of automated software tools for both the processing and analysis of provenance metadata in a scalable way. This requires that provenance be represented in a computable format to enable software applications to interpret it [7].

The proof layer in the Semantic Web layer cake, corresponding to provenance information, has been identified as an important component for the implementation of “trust mechanisms” and effective information extraction from the Web [8]. Sahoo et al. [9] recently brought together the elements of the Semantic Web and provenance metadata to define “semantic provenance as information created with reference to a formal knowledge model or an ontology that imposes a domain-specific provenance view on scientific data.”

The primary objective of this workshop is to explore the role of Semantic Web and its standards in addressing some of the critical challenges facing provenance management, namely:

• Efficiently capturing and propagating provenance metadata as data is processed, fragmented and recombined across multiple applications and domains on a Web scale.
  
• A common representation model for provenance, underpinned by a formal theory for use by both agents and humans [9].
  
• Interoperability of provenance information generated in distributed environments such as the Web and myGrid [10].
  
• Effective storage and querying mechanisms to support advanced provenance analysis, since provenance information is often many times larger than the data itself [11].
  
• Practical tools to aid in visualization of provenance information, such as provenance associated with evolution of workflows [12]
  

The workshop aims to:

• Bring together both academic and industrial researchers in provenance management and Semantic Web to address issues facing provenance management in the context of real world projects. Simultaneously, the workshop aims to raise awareness among provenance researchers about Semantic Web and correspondingly highlight provenance management as a rich problem domain for Semantic Web researchers.
  
• The specific focus of this year’s workshop will be on provenance management in real world eScience projects. This will allow the evaluation of proposed provenance management solutions in context of practical implementations and will provide a sound basis for discussions on current and future directions of provenance research.
  

Relevance and Timeliness

Several workshops each addressing different aspects of provenance have been held, such as Provenance in Databases [13], Provenance in Scientific Workflows [13], and IPAW 2008, but none of these workshops have addressed the role of Semantic Web in provenance management. Further, large eScience projects such as the Semantic Provenance Capture in Data Ingest Systems (SPCDIS) [14], Semantic Problem solving Environment for T.cruzi [15] are being funded (by NSF and NIH respectively) that makes this workshop timely and pertinent. The recently approved IEEE Internet Computing special issue on “Provenance in Web applications in Business, eScience and Social Networking” also emphasizes the increasing importance of provenance management in computer science research.

Audience

The workshop anticipates the participation of researchers in academia and industry involved in both provenance management and Semantic Web. Given the focus of this workshop on real world eScience projects, domain scientists interested in provenance management in different domains are also expected to actively participate. The domain scientists are expected to provide the use cases requiring solutions by joint efforts of provenance and Semantic Web researchers.

Workshop Format

Invited Talk

To Be Announced

Paper Presentations

The workshop solicits the submission of original research papers dealing with both analytical theoretical and practical aspects of provenance management using Semantic Web. Topics of interest include but not restricted to:

• Representation models for provenance, provenance ontologies
• Provenance analysis (reasoning, user-defined rules)
• Efficient and scalable provenance storage
• Querying and retrieval of provenance information
• Privacy issues in provenance mining
• Annotation of scientific data with provenance metadata
• Propagation of provenance across applications
• Provenance infrastructure in eScience projects
• Optimization approaches for efficient provenance querying
• Approaches to provenance collection in scientific workflows
• Provenance application in business, Web applications

General Discussion

The paper presentations and the invited talk are expected to drive the discussion round and facilitate exchange of ideas for further collaborations on role of Semantic Web in provenance management.

Organization

Chairs

• Amit Sheth: Amit Sheth is an educator, researcher, and entrepreneur. He is the LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar for Advanced Data Management and Analysis and the director of Kno.e.sis Center at the Wright State University. He has some of the best cited papers (h-index 58) in information integration, workflow management, Semantic Web and semantic web services, and his research interests includes semantics-empowered sensor and social computing on the Web. His research has led to two companies and many deployed systems and applications. http://knoesis.org/amit

• Vassilis Christophides: Vassilis Christophides is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, and affiliated researcher at the FORTH-ICS, Hellas. His main research interests include Semantic Web and Peer-to-Peer information management systems, semistructured and XML/RDF data models and query languages as well as description and composition languages for e-services. He has published over 60 articles in international conferences and journals and received the 2004 SIGMOD Test of Time Award and the Best Paper Award at the 2nd and 6th International Semantic Web Conference in 2003 and 2007.

Organizing Committee/PC Co-Chairs

• Juliana Freire, University of Utah
  

Juliana Freire is an Associate Professor at the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Before, she was member of technical staff at the Database Systems Research Department at Bell Laboratories (Lucent Technologies) and an Assistant Professor at OGI/OHSU. An important theme is Professor Freire's work is the development of data management technology to address new problems introduced by emerging applications, including the Web and scientific applications. Her recent research has focused on two main topics: scientific data management and Web mining. Within scientific data management, she is best known for her work in provenance and scientific workflows, and for being a co-creator of VisTrails.
Further details are at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/~juliana/

• Paolo Missier, University of Manchester, UK
  

Paolo Missier has been a Research Associate with the School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, where he is now a Research Fellow. His general area of research is Information Management.
Further details are at: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pmissier/

• Satya S. Sahoo, Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University (satyasahoo@ieee.org)
  

Satya Sahoo is a researcher and doctoral student at the Kno.e.sis Center, Wright State University. His research interests include semantic provenance, knowledge representation, and information integration in biomedical and sensor domains. He has defined a formal logic-based provenance management system for scientific data. It is composed of a novel provenance algebra and use of new class of materialized views for provenance query optimization. He also works on large scale scientific data integration using ontologies as unifying schema in conjunction with inference rules for reconciliation of semantic heterogeneity (part of the NIH-funded Semantic Problem Solving Environment for T.cruzi).
Further details are at: http://knoesis.wright.edu/researchers/satya

Program Committee

A list of (potential) members of the program committee.

• Adriane Chapman, MITRE
• Aleksander Slominski, IBM Research
• Bertram Ludäscher, University of California Davis
• Beth Plale, Indiana University
• Claudio Silva, University of Utah
• Francisco Curbera, IBM Research
• Giorgos Flouris, FORTH-ICS, Greece
• Ilkay Altintas, San Diego Supercomputer Center, UCSD
• James Cheney, University of Edinburgh
• James Hendler, Tetherless World Research Constellation, RPI
• Jun Zhao, Oxford University
• Margo Seltzer, Harvard University
• Nirmal Mukhi, IBM Research
• Olivier Bodenreider, National Library of Medicine, NIH
• Peter Fox, Tetherless World Research Constellation, RPI
• Roger Barga, Microsoft Research
• Sanjeev Khanna, University of Pennsylvania
• Sarah Cohen-Boulakia, Universite Paris-Sud
• Susan Davidson, University of Pennsylvania
• Val Tannen, University of Pennsylvania
• Yogesh Simmhan, Microsoft Research

Submissions of Papers

Submissions and reviewing will be handled using the EasyChair reviewing system. Submitted papers will be refereed by the Program Committee. Accepted papers will be available in form of electronic proceedings and attendees will get a printed copy of proceedings.

Important Dates (Tentative)

• Submissions due: Friday, July 10 2009 23:59 (11:59pm) Hawaii time
• Notification: August 14 2009

References

1. Hey T, Trefethen, A. E. . Cyberinfrastructure for e-Science. Science 2005;308(5723):817 - 821.
2. Maximilien EM, Ranabahu, A., Gomadam, K. An Online Platform for Web APIs and Service Mashups. IEEE Internet Computing 2008;12(5):32-43.
3. www.nbirn.net.
4. http://bioontology.org.
5. http://pan-starrs.ifa.hawaii.edu/.
6. http://www.neptune.washington.edu/.
7. Goble C. Position Statement: Musings on Provenance, Workflow and (Semantic Web) Annotations for Bioinformatics. In: Workshop on Data Derivation and Provenance; 2002; Chicago; 2002.
8. Sizov S. What Makes You Think That? The Semantic Web's Proof Layer. IEEE Intelligent Systems 2007;22(6):94-99.
9. Sahoo SS, Sheth, A., Henson, C. Semantic Provenance for eScience: Managing the Deluge of Scientific Data. IEEE Internet Computing 2008;12(4):46-54.
10. http://www.mygrid.org.uk/.
11. Chapman AP, Jagadish, H. V., Ramanan, P. Efficient provenance storage. In: ACM SIGMOD international Conference on Management of Data; 2008 June 09 - 12, 2008; Vancouver, Canada: ACM, New York, NY; 2008. p. 993-1006.
12. Freire J, Silva, C.T., Callahan, S.P., Santos, E., Scheidegger,C. E., Vo, H.T. . Managing Rapidly-Evolving Scientific Workflows. In: proceedings of the International Provenance and Annotation Workshop (IPAW); 2006.
13. http://wiki.esi.ac.uk/Principles_of_Provenance.
14. http://spcdis.hao.ucar.edu/.
15. http://knoesis.wright.edu/research/semsci/projects/tcruzi/.