provBookR creates an HTML-based visualizations of the collected provenance from R scripts. The provBookR package does this by utilizing previously developed R provenance tools. In particular, provBookR relies on RDataTracker (rdtLite) to record provenance generated from scripts in R, provGraphR for querying the collected provenance, and provParseR for processing the provenance.
The provBookR package makes use of a number of Data, HTML, and Provenance R packages.
# Data packages:
library(DT)
library(gdata)
library(gsubfn)
library(lubridate)
library(tidyverse)
# HTML packages:
library(knitr)
library(htmltools)
library(markdown)
library(shiny)
library(shinyjs)
# Provenance packages:
library(rdtLite) # Load Provenance Collector
library(provGraphR) # Load Provenance Traveler
library(provParseR) # Load Provenance Parser
library(provDebugR) # Load Provenance Debugger
library(provSummarizeR) # Load Provenance Summarizer
As a result, provBookR is capable of recording and generating presentations of data provenance from individual R data objects, which users specify through a browser interface. The presentation done by provBookR is in the form of booklets called provbooks - interactive booklet-like web pages created from R.
The systems perspective of the provBookR pacakge is as follows:
The motivation for provBookR’s booklet interface is to produce a document with familiar appears (i.e., books) that contains the data provenance and animation of the data provenance.
The animations and visualizations represent the various data manipulations of the respective data objects. In doing so, provBookR affords scientist and programmers a visual aid for understanding and reproducing scientific analyses and results in R.