Provenance of software development processes

Abstract

"Why does the build fail currently?" - This and similar questions arise on a daily basis in software development processes (SDP). There is no easy way to answer these questions, the required information is stored throughout different tools, the version control and continuous integration systems in this example. The tools mainly live in isolated worlds and no direct connection between their data exists. This paper proposes a solution to such problems, based on provenance technologies. After outlining the complexity of a SDP, the questions arising on a daily basis are categorized. Finally an approach to make the SDP provenance-aware is proposed based on PRiME, the Open Provenance Model and a SOA architecture using Neo4j to store the data, Gremlin to query it and REST webservices as connection to the tools. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.