A Proof of Concept: Provenance in a Service Oriented Architecture

The utility of provenance is becoming apparent in many Grid and Web Service based applications, where there is frequently a need to trace back and understand the processes that lead to a specific result. The term provenance however lends itself to several possible conceptions, and our initial step in the EU Provenance project was to design and implement a simple system to articulate our conception of provenance. This system, termed the pre-prototype, is based on a conceptualized process for baking a Victoria Sponge Cake. This report describes the cake baking scenario, presents some provenance-type questions that can be asked about the baking process and provides an implementation of the cake baking process within a service-oriented architecture framework that can answer these questions using collated provenance data.