With existing datasets growing and new data being added constantly, the Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud becomes increasingly interesting for the Enterprise, allowing companies to augment and complement internal knowledge with external information. The development of domain-specific applications that benefit from LOD repositories, though, is often a time-consuming and costly task. In our talk, we present the Information Workbench, an Open Source self-service platform for the fast development of domain-specific linked data applications.

1. Peter Haase, Tobias Mathäß, Michael Schmidt,
Andreas Eberhart, Ulrich Walther
fluid Operations AG
Self-Service Development of Linked Data
Applications with the Information Workbench
ISWC Shanghai, November 11, 2010

2. Increasing Popularity of Linked Open Data
• LOD cloud as of Sep 2010
• 25 billion triples
• 395 million RDF links
• Covering various domains
• Media
• Life Science
• Geography
• Publications
• …

3. New Opportunities
• Established standards define common data models,
vocabularies, semantics
• RDF/RDFS, OWL, SPARQL
• From data silos to a web of data
• Innovative applications that
• Integrate data from various domains and sources
• Repurpose the data in unexpected ways
• Leverage semantic technologies for improved search and presentation
• Allow for addressing expressive information needs
• Benefits of Linked Data in the enterprise
• Semantically integrate and interlink data scattered among different
information systems
• Cross the chasm between enterprise-internal and public data

4. Challenges in Building Linked Data Applications
• Discovery of relevant data sources
• Heterogeneity in various dimensions
 Location, ownership of data (internal / external, open / closed)
 Identifiers, structure and vocabularies
• Structured and unstructured data
• Quality of Linked Data
• Various forms of imperfection (erroneous, incomplete, imprecise data)
• Trustworthiness
• End-user oriented interfaces and interaction paradigms
• Interfaces that operate over large amounts of data, flexible and dynamic schemas
• Meaningful aggregation of the data
• Support for expressive information needs, while retaining intuitive interfaces

5. The Information Workbench
• Platform for Linked Data Application Development
• Base functionality to build applications without any programming
• SDK for easy extensions
• Available in Open Source at http://iwb.fluidops.com/
• Covering the entire lifecycle of interacting with Linked Data
 Discovery of data sources
 Integration of data sources
 Visualization
 Search and Exploration
 Collaborative generation of data
• Targeted at
• Linked Open Data, Linked Government Data
• Linked Enterprise Data
• Combinations thereof

6. Information Workbench Architecture
• Extensible, widget-based UI
• Resource-centric presentation
• Living UI, which exploits semantics of
underlying data
• Large collection of predefined widgets,
easily extendable
• Search and information access
• Coexistence of structured and
unstructured data
• Different search paradigms (keyword
and faceted search, semantic query
completion)
• Data integration through providers
• Convert data from a data source into the
RDF data format
• Customizable, easily extensible
• Use of public LOD registries

7. Self-Service Application Development
1. Linked Open Data Discovery
Visually explore data sets and identify those relevant for your
application
2. Data Integration
Integrate the data sets into your application with the click of your
mouse
3. Customization of the Frontend
Declaratively customize the user interface using a selection of widgets
4. Extending the Platform with own Components
Use APIs and SDKs to implement your own widgets, providers, etc.
EverythingSelf-service!

8. Discovery of Data Sets
• Access to data registered at global registries, e.g. ckan.org,
data.gov, …
• Based on metadata vocabularies (voID, DCAT)
• Sort/filter data sets by topic, license, size and many more
facets to identify relevant data
• Visually explore data sets

9. Data Integration
• Integrate relevant Linked Data sources with the click of a button
• Support for different distributions of the data
• RDF dumps
• SPARQL endpoints
• URI lookup
• More to come
• Add providers for internal and external legacy data sources
• Interlink different data sets
• Exploit existing links and mappings between data sources
• Use third party mappings
• User-generated mappings (pay-as-you-go)
• Integrate components for automated link/mapping discovery

10. Structured Data in the Frontend

11. Wiki-based Interface

12. Widgets for UI Customization
• Declaratively specify UI based on available pool of widgets
using simple wiki-based syntax
• Widgets have direct access to the database
• Embed dynamic data, visualizations, forms, etc.
• Type-based template mechanism
Wiki Page in Edit Mode … … and Displayed Result Page

13. Widgets: Visualization and Exploration

14. Widgets: Analytics and Reporting

15. Widgets: Mashups with Social Media

16. Live Demo

17. Your Way to the Information Workbench
• Public demonstrator with examples from many domains
http://iwb.fluidops.com
• Download installable binaries or Amazon EC2 image
http://iwb.fluidops.com/download
Try the free Amazon Micro instance!
• Source code and SDK (LGPL license)
http://iwb.fluidops.com/community
• Also see brochure in your conference bag

18. Summary
• Platform for Linked Data application development
• Addressing complete lifecycle of interaction with the data
• Simple process for application development
1. Linked open data discovery
2. Data integration
3. Customization of the frontend
• Extensible via SDK

19. Thank you for your attention!
CONTACT:
fluid Operations AG Email: info@fluidOps.com
Altrottstr. 31 Website: www.fluidOps.com
Walldorf, Germany Tel.: +49 6227 3849-567