English

ProvSQL: A General System for Keeping Track of the Provenance and Probability of Data

Databases 2025-12-18 v3

Abstract

We present the data model, design choices, and performance of ProvSQL, a general and easy-to-deploy provenance tracking and probabilistic database system implemented as a PostgreSQL extension. ProvSQL's data and query models closely reflect that of a large core of SQL, including multiset semantics, the full relational algebra, and aggregation. A key part of its implementation relies on generic provenance circuits stored in memory-mapped files. We propose benchmarks to measure the overhead of provenance and probabilistic evaluation and demonstrate its scalability and competitiveness with respect to other state-of-the-art systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.12058,
  title  = {ProvSQL: A General System for Keeping Track of the Provenance and Probability of Data},
  author = {Aryak Sen and Silviu Maniu and Pierre Senellart},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.12058},
  year   = {2025}
}