[midPoint] Blog: Data Provenance, Milestone 1

[Radovan Semancik]

Dear midPoint community,

Data provenance 
<https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/midprivacy/phases/01-data-provenance-prototype/> 
development in midPoint is moving forward. The implementation has 
reached its first milestone. For those interested in the details there 
are already few things to have a look at.

We started with analysing the use cases 
<https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/midprivacy/phases/01-data-provenance-prototype/provenance-use-cases/> 
and preliminary list of metadata uses and items 
<https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/midprivacy/phases/01-data-provenance-prototype/metadata-usecases/>. 
This lead us to solution architecture 
<https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/midprivacy/phases/01-data-provenance-prototype/architecture/> 
and we have started designingthe meta-data structure 
<https://github.com/Evolveum/midpoint/blob/feature/axiom/infra/schema/src/main/resources/xml/ns/public/common/common-metadata-3.xsd>.

However, the greatest challenge was the schema modeling. This was quite 
expected. We are at the end of the road for XML Schema Definition (XSD). 
It is quite clear we have to make a big step forward 
<https://evolveum.com/a-road-to-axiom/>. Therefore, we started working 
on a new schema language: Axiom 
<https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/midprivacy/phases/01-data-provenance-prototype/axiom/>. 
We started designing the language and implementing a prototype parser. 
The code is available in axiom module in feature/axiom branch 
<https://github.com/Evolveum/midpoint/tree/feature/axiom/infra/axiom> of 
midPoint source code. The code is stil very experimental. Our plan is to 
validate that the language works by trying it on ourselves – we would 
like to express all midPoint schemas in Axiom evetually. Until we can 
pass through such validation both the Axiom language and the code is 
likely to change.

We have also made some progress on the user interface side and we are 
quite ahead of plan with that. We have extended Prism 
<https://wiki.evolveum.com/display/midPoint/Prism+Objects> interfaces to 
introduce support for value metadata. We will use this to display data 
provenance meta-data in midPoint user interface. Implementation of user 
interface support is already in progress and we have first screenshots:

https://evolveum.com/wp-content/uploads/screenshot-m1-simple-metadata.png

https://evolveum.com/wp-content/uploads/screenshot-m1-transformation-metadata.png

There is still a lot to do. Axiom has to mature, we have to connect all 
the pieces by using midPoint mappings, improve the user interface and do 
a lot of smaller things. But we are on the right track and we are moving 
ahead. This milestone is more important than it may seem. This effort is 
part of midPrivacy initiative 
<https://evolveum.com/introducing-midprivacy-initiative/>, which is 
long-term plan to implement data protection mechanisms in midPoint. And 
this is the first real milestone in midPrivacy implementation. Data 
protection is one step closer to become a reality.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 
research and innovation programme under the NGI_TRUST grant agreement no 
825618.

(Reposted from Evolveum blog 
<https://evolveum.com/data-provenance-milestone-1/>)

-- 
Radovan Semancik
Software Architect
evolveum.com

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