CAREER: Storing, Querying and Re-Using Provenance of Computational Tasks

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Workflow-based systems have emerged as an alternative to ad-hocapproaches to data exploration that are widely used in the scientificcommunity. Workflows can capture computational tasks at various levelsof detail and systematically record the provenance (history) informationnecessary for reproducibility, result publication andsharing. Although the benefits of using scientific workflow systemsare well known, the fact that workflows are hard to create andmaintain has been a major barrier to wider adoption of the technologyin the scientific domain.The goal of this project is to produce new algorithms and techniquesfor exploring and re-using useful knowledge embedded in workflowspecifications and in the provenance of the data they manipulate.This project addresses key limitations in existing workflowsystems. First, it develops a set of usable tools that enable casualusers (who do not necessarily have programming expertise) to performexploratory tasks and solve problems through workflows. These includeintuitive user interfaces to manipulate collections of workflow and toquery workflows by example. Second, it builds a scalable provenancemanagement infrastructure to support the efficient execution of theseoperations.The research results of this project advance the state of the art andbuild fundamental knowledge in storing, querying, and re-usingprovenance of computational tasks. This project has the potential toimpact a variety of applications where the creation and maintenance ofworkflows is currently a major bottleneck. This includes largecomputational science projects and portals. Furthermore, it makesworkflows and workflow technology more accessible to casual users.Through our interdisciplinary collaborations, this project will haveimmediate impact in helping improve the scientific discovery process.The involvement of graduate and undergraduate students in the projectwill provide mentoring opportunities. The PI is committed torecruiting minority students. The results of this project will bedisseminated as research papers and as freely available tools at theproject website:http://www.cs.utah.edu/~juliana/projects/NSF-IIS-0746500