Using the provenance from astronomical workflows to increase processing efficiency

Abstract

Astronomy is increasingly becoming a data-driven science as the community builds larger instruments which are capable of gathering more data than previously possible. As the sizes of the datasets increase, it becomes even more important to make the most efficient use of the computational resources available. In this work, we highlight how provenance can be used to increase the computational efficiency of astronomical workflows. We describe a provenance-enabled image processing pipeline and motivate the generation of provenance with two relevant use cases. The first use case investigates the origin of an optical variation and the second is concerned with the objects used to calibrate the image. The provenance was then queried in order to evaluate the relative computational efficiency of use case evaluation, with and without the use of provenance. We find that recording the provenance of the pipeline increases the original processing time by ~45%. However, we find that when evaluating the two identified use cases, the inclusion of provenance improves the efficiency of processing by ~99% and ~96% for Use Cases 1 and 2, respectively. Furthermore, we combine these results with the probability that Use Cases 1 and 2 will need to be evaluated and find a net decrease in computational processing efficiency of 13–44% when incorporating provenance generation within the workflow. However, we deduce that provenance has the potential to produce a net increase in this efficiency if more uses cases are to be considered.

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