# Revisiting Semiring Provenance for Datalog

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.10766 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10766/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 22 Feb 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Inconsistency Handling in Prioritized Databases with Universal Constraints: Complexity Analysis and Links with Active Integrity Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03523/) (2023)
- [The Complexity of Why-Provenance for Datalog Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12773/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Data provenance consists in bookkeeping meta information during query evaluation, in order to enrich query results with their trust level, likelihood, evaluation cost, and more. The framework of semiring provenance abstracts from the specific kind of meta information that annotates the data. While the definition of semiring provenance is uncontroversial for unions of conjunctive queries, the picture is less clear for Datalog. Indeed, the original definition might include infinite computations, and is not consistent with other proposals for Datalog semantics over annotated data. In this work, we propose and investigate several provenance semantics, based on different approaches for defining classical Datalog semantics. We study the relationship between these semantics, and introduce properties that allow us to analyze and compare them.