Fine Grain Provenance Using Temporal Databases

Database applications often require rigorous provenance; e.g., it is important to know who is responsible for a change and at what time a change was done. Additionally, it is important to know which program, rule, or model was executed, and which data was used as input. The standard solution is to include provenance into the application logic. The consequence is that such a program extends significantly – a factor of 3 to 5 is often cited – and most importantly provenance by applications is normally badly designed and hard to use. This paper shows that temporal databases can be used to automate the provisioning process and that they enable a application design based on three key concepts: Facts, knowledge, and information.