Provenance Ontology
The provenance ontology supports data management and auditing tasks. It is used to define the different types of named graphs we used in the store (quad store) and enables their association with metadata that allow us to manage, validate and expose data to our services
Introduction
An ontology to capture data about the provenance of data in an RDF Triple Store. This provenance is focused on the immediate providers and not the ultimate source, so for example, this would record that geodata was provided by the BBC Locator team, and not geonames. In the Linked Data Platform, this data is applied to contexts or named graphs. A named graph is, in effect, a 'fourth part' to a triple, hence the term 'quad store'.
Sample Data
@prefix provenance: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/> .
@prefix bbc: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/bbc/> .
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/contexts/a-b-c-d#id>
a provenance:Dataset ;
rdfs:label "English Football Teams"^^xsd:string
;
provenance:changeReason "Initial creation of dataset"^^xsd:string ;
provenance:version "1"^^xsd:int ; provenance:product
bbc:Sport;
provenance:provided "20121010T16:34Z"^^xsd:datetime;
provenance:provider <mailto:tom.grahame@bbc.co.uk>.
Ontology Diagram
Ontology Terms
Automatically generated documentation for the ontology terms.
Classes
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/CreativeWorkGraph
Description
The class of named graphs which contain the metadata for the CreativeWorks. For example all the metadata for a news story provided by a CMS will be contained in a single
CreativeWorkGraph instance.
Superclasses
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/Dataset
Description
Dataset is a single graph which contains a collection of things that is managed together, e.g., "the dataset of the BBC's News Regions". The management of datasets
involves editing RDF files and publishing them to the triplestore in a single action. This requires a good knowledge of semantic technologies therefore datasets are managed by experts.
Superclasses
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/Graph
Description
The class of named graphs. All our data is stored in named graphs of different types depending on its provenance and management. These are specified by the subclasses of
Graph.
Superclasses
Subclasses
Properties
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/Ontology
Description
Graphs that contain ontologies in the store are declared to be of type provenance:Ontology. The graph name in the store is identical to the ontology IRI.
Superclasses
Subclasses
Properties
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/ThingGraph
Description
Thing graphs hold metadata about a single thing. Note the difference with Datasets, which hold metadata about many things. Thing graphs are usually exposed to user
friendly tools which allow users with little on no RDF skills to specifically edit a metadata about a thing in a form. For example a thing graph can contain metadata about a football team such as its
various names, LOD links for the team, a short disambiguation hint, e.t.c. Thing graphs are also used to store metadata about things obtained from a feed, for example store metadata about locations
obtained from a Location Services feed.
Superclasses
Properties
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/TransitionOntology
Description
An ontology that is used to provide a transition feature for a parent ontology
Superclasses
Properties
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/canonicalLocation
Description
The canonical location where all the triples contained within the context (named graph) are stored in and can be referred to outside the triplestore.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/changeReason
Description
The reason for the most recent change applied to the graph.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/created
Description
The date when a Thing was created.
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/deprecated
Description
A predicate to allow hiding of Things so as to not delete them and lose the reference object.
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/managedBy
Description
Associates the thing graph of a cms:ManagedThing with its managing system. This is needed to solve cases where different systems can manage metadata about a shared thing.
E.g., one thing graph from BBC News may have all the politics related metadata for David Cameron, while another thing graph managed by Knowledge and Learning may contain information about the historical
role David Cameron has played as a conservative leader in British politics. Separating metadata into thing graphs is useful for managing information about shared things.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/owner
Description
This property indicates the owner of the data, i.e., the person or CMS who's responsible for managing and governing the data.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/product
Description
The reference to the product from which the dataset, graph was created. This is needed for dataset management permissions. Not to be confused with bbc:product.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/provided
Description
The date and time at which the data was provided to the triplestore.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/provider
Description
The email address extracted from the BBC SSL Certificate, indicating the person or system which directly interacted with the writer service to put the data in the store.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/public
Description
This predicate allows the distinction of ontologies that are appropriate for publishing from those ones that are currently kept internal, e.g., for testing purposes.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/slug
Description
This is a short human readable identifier for the ontology.
Domain
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/transitions
Description
The property that this transition property is providing a transition for.
URI
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies/provenance/version
Description
The version of the graph.
Domain