Linked open data (LOD) describes freely available data in the World Wide Web that can be identified through Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) and can thereby be directly accessed via HTTP. Data can also be linked to other data using again URIs. In the ideal case data are represented and linked using the “Resource Description Framework” (RDF) as well as standard technologies based on RDF like “SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language” (SPARQL) and the web ontology language (OWL), thus making linked data part of the semantic web. This linked data constitutes a worldwide network that is also called “linked (open) data cloud” or “giant global graph.” For all those cases where the focus is less on the open and free usability of the data we speak simply of “linked data”.
Who profitably uses LOD?
Public institutions such as NGOs, municipalities, electronic libraries, archives, broadcasting corporations, hotel and airport systems use LOD with the purpose of allowing a uniform use of data via the web.
Who has implemented it so far?
In /lod2/ is a current example of institutions that have turned their information to LOD form. According to lod-cloud.net/state the LOD “cloud” amounted to approx. 30 billion records in 2011 with more than 500 million outgoing connections.
The challenge
Each institution maintains its data in its own data bases, intranets and repositories. The manner in which this knowledge is stored remains proprietary, i.e. in such formats that can only be processed by given commercial applications. The implementation of one’s own data base into a LOD repository requires fast web technologies as well as special modeling knowledge and needs standards.
We analyze your databases or relevant parts of it, and make modeling suggestions in several variants (if possible) on how your represented data knowledge can be modeled and structured using appropriate vocabularies. We implement the variant that is chosen by you, with the guarantee that the mentioned LOD repository will be operative within the agreed time frame.