Provenance-Enabling DOE Visualization Applications

The volume of information acquired and generated in the scientific community has been growing at an exponential rate. However, the absence of provenance information ¿ e.g., who created a data product and when, when was it modified and by whom, what was the process used to create the data product ¿ makes it hard (and sometimes impossible) to reproduce and share results, to solve problems collaboratively, to validate results with different input data, to understand the process to solve a particular problem, and to re-use the knowledge involved in the anal¬ysis process. In addition, without precise and sufficient information about how the data product was generated, its value is greatly diminished. This project will design and develop an add-on mechanism to provenance-enable the top three DOE visualization applications: ParaView, VisIt, and CEI Ensight. One component of the provenance add-on is the Provenance Capture SDK, which will provide the ability to capture provenance of data manipulated by other (third-party) applications. The add-on will include a Provenance Explorer tool for users to collaboratively interrogate and re-use the provenance data. This tool will allow users to manipulate provenance data both locally and remotely through Web-based interfaces. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: The technology should find use in applications that make heavy use of simulations, data mining, and visualiza¬tion. Such applications are widely used in oil and gas exploration, computational hedge funds, energy transportation, and computer-aided design and manufacturing.