Prime: A methodology for developing provenance-aware applications

Provenance refers to the past processes that brought about a given (version of an) object, item or entity. By knowing the provenance of data, users can often better understand, trust, reproduce, and validate it. A provenance-aware application has the functionality to answer questions regarding the provenance of the data it produces, by using documentation of past processes. Prime is a software engineering technique for adapting application designs to enable them to interact with a provenance middleware layer, thereby making them provenance-aware. In this article, we specify the steps involved in applying Prime, analyze its effectiveness, and illustrate its use with two case studies, in bioinformatics and medicine.