Linked data; Data on the Web

Notes de l'éditeur

2. Hi, I'm Keith Alexander, a Technical Consultant for Talis doing Linked Data consultancy. I'm going to try to show you what Linked Data is, and explain why it's the way forward for sharing data on the web, and why important data providers like data.gov.uk, BBC, and Ordnance Survey, are doing it. I imagine in this room we've got a mixture of people here, some might already know all about Linked Data, and maybe others who heard of it for the first time this morning, and are wondering what it is and what it looks like....
3. This is Linked Data, this is what it sometimes looks like It's a web page about a school at the top is the URI of the school. The web is a big space for storing documents and data. You need a way for uniquely and unambiguously identifying the things that the data is about. Luckily the web has these: http URIs, If you know that this URI identifies Arden School in the Black Country, and want data about the school, you put the URI in the Address bar of your browser, and you get back this web page telling you stuff about the school. All this stuff is data describing Arden School. The properties on the left are all links. If you want to find out what "MSOA" means you can follow the link for more information. If you want to find out more about the Black Country, that's also a link HM Goverment Schools Data http://education.data.gov.uk/
4. So is this, Open Library is Linked Data The prime aim of this website wasn't to publish Linked Data per se, but to provide a record for every book in the world, however their tagline One Web Page for every Book ties in very nicely with Linked Data publishing practices - it makes it easy for them to provide a URI for every book Open Library http://openlibrary.org/
5. And this is Linked Data at the BBC, they’re doing a lot with Linked Data. BBC Wildlife Finder http://www.bbc.co.uk/wildlifefinder/
6. This is Linked Data too ... BIS Research Funding Explorer http://bis.clients.talis.com/
7. So, what is linked data? Linked Data is about taking all the good things we know about the way the web works today and applying that to data. It's thinking about data in the same way we think about web pages, talking about things we care about and creating connections between them with links. It takes away from many of the constraints of tables in Excel, or the limitations of XML. Today, the tools are not all there yet. There are some great tools for working with this stuff, but most are aimed at developers and require some technical knowledge. More consumer focussed tools are coming though.
8. So, what is linked data? Linked Data is about taking all the good things we know about the way the web works today and applying that to data. It's thinking about data in the same way we think about web pages, talking about things we care about and creating connections between them with links. It takes away from many of the constraints of tables in Excel, or the limitations of XML. Today, the tools are not all there yet. There are some great tools for working with this stuff, but most are aimed at developers and require some technical knowledge. More consumer focussed tools are coming though.
9. So, what is linked data? Linked Data is about taking all the good things we know about the way the web works today and applying that to data. It's thinking about data in the same way we think about web pages, talking about things we care about and creating connections between them with links. It takes away from many of the constraints of tables in Excel, or the limitations of XML. Today, the tools are not all there yet. There are some great tools for working with this stuff, but most are aimed at developers and require some technical knowledge. More consumer focussed tools are coming though.
10. So, what is linked data? Linked Data is about taking all the good things we know about the way the web works today and applying that to data. It's thinking about data in the same way we think about web pages, talking about things we care about and creating connections between them with links. It takes away from many of the constraints of tables in Excel, or the limitations of XML. Today, the tools are not all there yet. There are some great tools for working with this stuff, but most are aimed at developers and require some technical knowledge. More consumer focussed tools are coming though.
11. So, what is linked data? Linked Data is about taking all the good things we know about the way the web works today and applying that to data. It's thinking about data in the same way we think about web pages, talking about things we care about and creating connections between them with links. It takes away from many of the constraints of tables in Excel, or the limitations of XML. Today, the tools are not all there yet. There are some great tools for working with this stuff, but most are aimed at developers and require some technical knowledge. More consumer focussed tools are coming though.
12. Linked data provides far more than a way to publish data. It provides a way to say things in a machine-readable way. As more of the web becomes machine-readable so more of the mundane search, navigation, co-ordination and aggregation tasks can be completed for us by machines. And, in the meantime, it becomes easier for humans to combine data too. As we’ve just seen, it’s not a different web, or a new web, it’s the web we already have made better. I say it’s not really about publishing data because we forget that data is really about describing things; the amount of traffic on a road; the performance of a school; the expenses paid to an mp. When we talk about data, the uniformity and number of things we’re talking about can lead us to forget what it is we’re trying to say.
13. This is how the Linked Data web looked in May of 2007, much like the list of websites founded before 1992 Let’s see how it’s grown...
17. This is the most recent diagram. This was created by asking the community to register their datasets. A crawling approach would be more accurate and more complete, but the team behind the diagram didn’t have the infrastructure to do that. This diagram represents billions of statements about everything from Miss Jean Brodie to the human genome and would be equivalent to the web sites founded before 1995
18. These are datasets we at Talis are involved with in some way, for some we created the data, did the data modelling work or helped an in-house team do their own data modelling. Some we’re hosting the primary copy in our platform, and for others we’re hosting a mirrored copy in our platform.
19. These are just some of the big names using this technology. You know Facebook’s ‘like’ button? That uses Facebook’s Open Graph Protocol — which is Linked Data. Google recently bought Metaweb, a company working with this technology, and just a few days ago announced that it will be supporting product descriptions — data — published using Good Relations; a Linked Data vocabulary for describing products. Some of these organisations are using LD within their own domains, as yet not publishing in on the web. Nevertheless they can benefit from the ability to link with data out on the wider web
20. Let’s take another look at Wildlife Finder and see how to get at the data...
21. The data behind the page is available in a machine readable form - RDF. RDF is easy to grasp for anyone used to working with data. We’ve been training lots of different groups, data owners, curators, developers, database administrators. What we find is that people find the approach very natural and easy to work with; the hardest thing is letting go of the way Excel and SQL databases have taught us to think in tables.
22. So, going back to the page in question, let’s take a look at the kinds of things it is saying.
23. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
24. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
25. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
26. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
27. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
28. Let’s start by looking quickly at a little of what the page says to us as humans... [relate each bullet to where it appears on the page] This is some of what the page says to us. In HTML, these statements are not machine-readable. Humans can pick them out because the page is very well designed visually and because people are good at this — we’re smart. Machines are not good at this. In Linked Data, these statements get made in a machine-readable way as well, making it possible for tools to consume this site in other ways than simply through the browser. Wildlife Finder is one of the BBC Linked Data properties that we helped design the Linked Data for and we think it’s been a great success. You can see a similar approach to building a Linked Data site on the BBC’s online coverage of the 2010 World Cup. We also helped design the Linked Data for that.
29. Let’s move that screenshot out of the way to make room for some more stuff...
30. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
31. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
32. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
33. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
34. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
35. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
36. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
37. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
38. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
39. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
40. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
41. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
42. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
43. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
44. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
45. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
46. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
47. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
48. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
49. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
50. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
51. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
52. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
53. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
54. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
55. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
56. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
57. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
58. The Linked Data model can be written many ways and one of the ways we use a lot is a simple diagram. We can draw the statements we took from the page, that are also in the Linked Data, and draw a picture of them. [go through statements] This simple diagrammatic approach is how we do much of our design work and is a key tool for understanding what things are and how they relate, link, to one another. Notice how what we’ve drawn is a web of interconnected things? That’s how we build this web of data.
59. Think about a CSV file for a second, one column for each property of the thing being described. The same number of columns on every row. Lots of empty columns where properties are optional or have a varying number of values. Take a list of your friends on facebook? how many columns do you allow? some people will only need a few, some would need thousands. By duplication I mean duplication caused by the way we write data into files. Say you have a CSV or XML file with data about employees, lots of people work for the same companies. In CSV, or XML, you have two choices, you can either repeat information about the company for each employee or you can invent your own way of referencing a separate file with a list of companies. In Linked Data the descriptions of employees and companies can all live happily together in one place, and there is support in the links of Linked Data for connecting employees with their employers. Because we can link anything to anything directly without having to use intermediate stages, many to many in Linked Data is simple. Have you ever tried to take two databases with different schema and merge them or even just two CSV files? With Linked Data the data might be different but the underlying data model allows you to mix data from different places together trivially. Have you ever looked at a csv file and wondered what that column of data was? some strange code or other that you can’t work out? In Linked Data the properties, sort of equivalent to column headings in CSV, are web addresses to, copy and paste it into a browser and there is the documentation for the property explaining exactly what it means. The documentation is Linked Data too, so tools can also go and fetch that information for you.
60. Think about a CSV file for a second, one column for each property of the thing being described. The same number of columns on every row. Lots of empty columns where properties are optional or have a varying number of values. Take a list of your friends on facebook? how many columns do you allow? some people will only need a few, some would need thousands. By duplication I mean duplication caused by the way we write data into files. Say you have a CSV or XML file with data about employees, lots of people work for the same companies. In CSV, or XML, you have two choices, you can either repeat information about the company for each employee or you can invent your own way of referencing a separate file with a list of companies. In Linked Data the descriptions of employees and companies can all live happily together in one place, and there is support in the links of Linked Data for connecting employees with their employers. Because we can link anything to anything directly without having to use intermediate stages, many to many in Linked Data is simple. Have you ever tried to take two databases with different schema and merge them or even just two CSV files? With Linked Data the data might be different but the underlying data model allows you to mix data from different places together trivially. Have you ever looked at a csv file and wondered what that column of data was? some strange code or other that you can’t work out? In Linked Data the properties, sort of equivalent to column headings in CSV, are web addresses to, copy and paste it into a browser and there is the documentation for the property explaining exactly what it means. The documentation is Linked Data too, so tools can also go and fetch that information for you.
61. Think about a CSV file for a second, one column for each property of the thing being described. The same number of columns on every row. Lots of empty columns where properties are optional or have a varying number of values. Take a list of your friends on facebook? how many columns do you allow? some people will only need a few, some would need thousands. By duplication I mean duplication caused by the way we write data into files. Say you have a CSV or XML file with data about employees, lots of people work for the same companies. In CSV, or XML, you have two choices, you can either repeat information about the company for each employee or you can invent your own way of referencing a separate file with a list of companies. In Linked Data the descriptions of employees and companies can all live happily together in one place, and there is support in the links of Linked Data for connecting employees with their employers. Because we can link anything to anything directly without having to use intermediate stages, many to many in Linked Data is simple. Have you ever tried to take two databases with different schema and merge them or even just two CSV files? With Linked Data the data might be different but the underlying data model allows you to mix data from different places together trivially. Have you ever looked at a csv file and wondered what that column of data was? some strange code or other that you can’t work out? In Linked Data the properties, sort of equivalent to column headings in CSV, are web addresses to, copy and paste it into a browser and there is the documentation for the property explaining exactly what it means. The documentation is Linked Data too, so tools can also go and fetch that information for you.
62. Think about a CSV file for a second, one column for each property of the thing being described. The same number of columns on every row. Lots of empty columns where properties are optional or have a varying number of values. Take a list of your friends on facebook? how many columns do you allow? some people will only need a few, some would need thousands. By duplication I mean duplication caused by the way we write data into files. Say you have a CSV or XML file with data about employees, lots of people work for the same companies. In CSV, or XML, you have two choices, you can either repeat information about the company for each employee or you can invent your own way of referencing a separate file with a list of companies. In Linked Data the descriptions of employees and companies can all live happily together in one place, and there is support in the links of Linked Data for connecting employees with their employers. Because we can link anything to anything directly without having to use intermediate stages, many to many in Linked Data is simple. Have you ever tried to take two databases with different schema and merge them or even just two CSV files? With Linked Data the data might be different but the underlying data model allows you to mix data from different places together trivially. Have you ever looked at a csv file and wondered what that column of data was? some strange code or other that you can’t work out? In Linked Data the properties, sort of equivalent to column headings in CSV, are web addresses to, copy and paste it into a browser and there is the documentation for the property explaining exactly what it means. The documentation is Linked Data too, so tools can also go and fetch that information for you.
63. Think about a CSV file for a second, one column for each property of the thing being described. The same number of columns on every row. Lots of empty columns where properties are optional or have a varying number of values. Take a list of your friends on facebook? how many columns do you allow? some people will only need a few, some would need thousands. By duplication I mean duplication caused by the way we write data into files. Say you have a CSV or XML file with data about employees, lots of people work for the same companies. In CSV, or XML, you have two choices, you can either repeat information about the company for each employee or you can invent your own way of referencing a separate file with a list of companies. In Linked Data the descriptions of employees and companies can all live happily together in one place, and there is support in the links of Linked Data for connecting employees with their employers. Because we can link anything to anything directly without having to use intermediate stages, many to many in Linked Data is simple. Have you ever tried to take two databases with different schema and merge them or even just two CSV files? With Linked Data the data might be different but the underlying data model allows you to mix data from different places together trivially. Have you ever looked at a csv file and wondered what that column of data was? some strange code or other that you can’t work out? In Linked Data the properties, sort of equivalent to column headings in CSV, are web addresses to, copy and paste it into a browser and there is the documentation for the property explaining exactly what it means. The documentation is Linked Data too, so tools can also go and fetch that information for you.
64. The point about mixing data is key to what we can achieve here. I showed you this screenshot earlier, it’s a tool we built for Business, Innovation and Skills to show how research funding translated into intellectual property and economic growth. The data for this came from several places * the region data came from the administrative geography * the research funding data from BIS * and the patent data from the patent office the three sets of data were converted independent of one another, with some basic agreement around what things would be called. Once the three sets of data were converted to Linked Data we just put them all in one store and they meshed - a meshup rather than a mashup.
65. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
66. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
67. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
68. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
69. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
70. So what does this all have to do with Open Data? Well, I’m not here to evangelise Open Data, others are doing that well-enough; and many people using Linked Data are not making that data open, but benefitting from it internally in their organisations — intranets of data. The Open Data movement often talks about opening up the silos as a metaphor for getting data out. The idea being that the data is stored, like grain, in big silos that you can see are there but can’t get any benefit from. Many approaches taken to Open Data, such as bulk downloads of CSV, publish a copy of the silo. Sure, you can download it and do what you want with it, but you don’t get changes without going back and downloading again. That’s fine for a lot of situations, but for a lot more it’s not adequate. What if the data is too large for most people to consume, they want to be able to pick slices of it. What if the data is updated frequently? Linked Data can allow you live access. Tim Berners-Lee talks about getting data onto the web using a 5-star system: [5 stars on bullets] Getting your data out onto the web in any format that people can consume is a good thing — do that today. Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the star system and how you can get better at this. If you’re consuming data, learn about this stuff and start pushing the keepers of the data you want to follow this 5-star system. Linked Data provides the technology for 4 and 5 stars.
71. Who was doing web-stuff back in 1995? Lots of us were back then, explaining to companies, bosses, anyone who would listen that this new ‘web’ thing was going to be big. But... to get on with it you had to learn (and hand-write) HTML. I remember being asked plenty of times why we needed a web server, and why we couldn’t just use Lotus AMI Pro documents... Anyone still got a copy of AMI Pro? We needed HTML to create an open web where anyone could say anything about anything, and we need Linked Data (RDF) in the same way — it is the standard for describing things and making connections, link, between them. The data model is old, Callimachus invented it at the Library of Alexandria, Cutter re-discovered it when he invented card catalogs for libraries in the 1850s; computer scientists re-discovered it in the late 1960s, but computers weren’t powerful enough then so Codd “optimised” the model into tables — introducing limitations we’ve all been working around for the past 40 years. Linked Data is a more natural and open model to publishing data on the web and we’d be happy to help you get into it some more.
72. Who was doing web-stuff back in 1995? Lots of us were back then, explaining to companies, bosses, anyone who would listen that this new ‘web’ thing was going to be big. But... to get on with it you had to learn (and hand-write) HTML. I remember being asked plenty of times why we needed a web server, and why we couldn’t just use Lotus AMI Pro documents... Anyone still got a copy of AMI Pro? We needed HTML to create an open web where anyone could say anything about anything, and we need Linked Data (RDF) in the same way — it is the standard for describing things and making connections, link, between them. The data model is old, Callimachus invented it at the Library of Alexandria, Cutter re-discovered it when he invented card catalogs for libraries in the 1850s; computer scientists re-discovered it in the late 1960s, but computers weren’t powerful enough then so Codd “optimised” the model into tables — introducing limitations we’ve all been working around for the past 40 years. Linked Data is a more natural and open model to publishing data on the web and we’d be happy to help you get into it some more.
73. Who was doing web-stuff back in 1995? Lots of us were back then, explaining to companies, bosses, anyone who would listen that this new ‘web’ thing was going to be big. But... to get on with it you had to learn (and hand-write) HTML. I remember being asked plenty of times why we needed a web server, and why we couldn’t just use Lotus AMI Pro documents... Anyone still got a copy of AMI Pro? We needed HTML to create an open web where anyone could say anything about anything, and we need Linked Data (RDF) in the same way — it is the standard for describing things and making connections, link, between them. The data model is old, Callimachus invented it at the Library of Alexandria, Cutter re-discovered it when he invented card catalogs for libraries in the 1850s; computer scientists re-discovered it in the late 1960s, but computers weren’t powerful enough then so Codd “optimised” the model into tables — introducing limitations we’ve all been working around for the past 40 years. Linked Data is a more natural and open model to publishing data on the web and we’d be happy to help you get into it some more.
74. Who was doing web-stuff back in 1995? Lots of us were back then, explaining to companies, bosses, anyone who would listen that this new ‘web’ thing was going to be big. But... to get on with it you had to learn (and hand-write) HTML. I remember being asked plenty of times why we needed a web server, and why we couldn’t just use Lotus AMI Pro documents... Anyone still got a copy of AMI Pro? We needed HTML to create an open web where anyone could say anything about anything, and we need Linked Data (RDF) in the same way — it is the standard for describing things and making connections, link, between them. The data model is old, Callimachus invented it at the Library of Alexandria, Cutter re-discovered it when he invented card catalogs for libraries in the 1850s; computer scientists re-discovered it in the late 1960s, but computers weren’t powerful enough then so Codd “optimised” the model into tables — introducing limitations we’ve all been working around for the past 40 years. Linked Data is a more natural and open model to publishing data on the web and we’d be happy to help you get into it some more.
75. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
76. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
77. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
78. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
79. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
80. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
81. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.
82. There is a really great community around this stuff, and lots of material online. The focus of a lot of the material has been on publishing data this way, and the community is now really keen to help get people consuming this data.