Data Lineage

Lazy lineage collection typically captures only coarse-grain lineage at run time. These systems incur low capture overheads due to the small amount of lineage they capture. However, to answer fine-grain tracing queries, they must replay the data flow on all (or a large part) of its input and collect fine-grain lineage during the replay. This approach is suitable for forensic systems, where a user wants to debug an observed bad output.

Active collection systems capture entire lineage of the data flow at run time. The kind of lineage they capture may be coarse-grain or fine-grain, but they do not require any further computations on the data flow after its execution. Active fine-grain lineage collection systems incur higher capture overheads than lazy collection systems. However, they enable sophisticated replay and debugging.