Question: How can we customize the provenance implementation?
Answer: The provenance query implementation in RapidNet can be customized in the following ways:
- The representation of the provenance information of EDB tuples: The default function f_pEDB returns the provenance id. This can be customized with a different implementation.
- The representation of the provenance information of IDB tuples. The default function f_pIDB connects all the rule derivations of a given tuple using a "+" to concatenate them.
- The representation of the provenance information corresponding to rule execution. The default method f_pRule returns the rule id, rule location, and uses "*" to concatenate the two tuples used in a single rule.
Note that in the above cases, you can change the implementation in several ways. By either rewriting the function, or writing a new function and binding it to the same name f_pEDB, f_pIDB etc in the compiler or writing a new function and binding it to a new name. It is recommended to not bind to a new name as it may need code changes in the provenance rewrite feature.
The provenance maintenance in RapidNet can be customized in one way:
- You can customize the method used to generate a tuple ID. The default is to use f_sha1. This customization may need compiler code changes. You need to make sure that this change should be consistent with any customizations in the query implementation.
