Using Provenance for Repeatability

We present Provenance-To-Use (PTU), a tool that minimizes computation time during repeatability testing. Authors can use PTU to build a package that includes their software program and a provenance trace of an initial reference execution. Testers can select a subset of the package’s processes for a partial deterministic replay—based, for example, on their compute, memory and I/O utilization as measured during the reference execution. Using the provenance trace, PTU guarantees that events are processed in the same order using the same data from one execution to the next. We show the efficiency of PTU for conducting repeatability testing of workflow-based scientific programs.