Provenance Meets Bidirectional Transformations

Bidirectional transformations (bx) manage consistency between different independently-changing data structures, such as software engineering models. Many bx tools construct, exploit, and maintain various auxiliary structures required for correct and efficient consistency management. These data structures seem analogous to provenance in other settings, but their design is often ad hoc and implementationdependent. However, it is increasingly urgent to rationalize their design and use as first-class explanations, to help users understand complex system behavior. In this paper we explore whether and how these auxiliary structures can already be viewed as forms of provenance, and outline open questions and possible future directions for provenance in bidirectional transformations, and vice versa.