PROV

Prov is a term with several meanings across disciplines, and its most prominent use in modern information contexts is as a shorthand for provenance. In computing and data science, prov (often written as PROV) refers to the W3C PROV family of specifications that model the provenance of data and the processes that produce it. The PROV data model centers on three core concepts: Entity (a thing that exists or is produced), Activity (a process that acts upon entities), and Agent (a person, organization, or software involved). Relationships such as wasGeneratedBy, used, wasAssociatedWith, and wasDerivedFrom describe how data items come to be and how their history can be traced.

The PROV specifications include PROV-DM, the data model; PROV-N, a compact notation for expressing provenance; and serializations such as PROV-XML and PROV-JSON. There is also PROV-O, an OWL2 ontology that provides a semantic web representation of provenance information. Together, these standards aim to enable interoperability, reproducibility, and accountability by making the origins and transformation history of data explicit and machine-readable. They are applied in scientific workflows, data governance, digital forensics, and other domains where tracing data lineage is important.

Beyond computing, prov is also used as an abbreviation in non-technical contexts. In geography and administration, Prov. commonly denotes a province in various languages and documents, while in scheduling or documentation it may shorten provisional designations or measures. The exact meaning of prov depends on the domain and context in which it appears.