How to implement Linked Data: real case of the Aragon Open Data portal

A large number of different data sources with different contents and formats coexist in an open data portal. It is therefore necessary to provide each file, resource or content on the network with a context or definition that allows people, and also machines, to interpret its meaning. This is where the concept of Linked data comes in.

Linked Data allows the web to be used as a single large global database. Following this publishing paradigm, data is available in context and interconnected for reuse. Linked Data emerged from the Semantic Web project inspired by Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, from the need to introduce contextual information in the form of metadata on the Web.

The document "LinkedData as an open data model" briefly explains the basic concepts to understand how the semantic web and linked data works, such as the case of URIs or unique resource identifiers, ontologies or vocabularies that allow the description of relationships between them, to focus on how Aragon has implemented these technologies to develop different services, such as:

• The Interoperable Information Structure (EI2A), an ontology that homogenises structures, vocabularies and characteristics to respond to the diversity and heterogeneity of existing data within the Administration, within the framework of Aragon Open Data. The document explains some of the ontologies and vocabularies used for the development.
• The European Legislation Identifier (ELI), which allows online access to legislation in a formalised format that facilitates its reuse.
• The semantic infrastructure in Aragon Open Data, where the use of the Virtuoso tool for the storage of linked data stands out. The document explains the characteristics of this universal server, whose architecture allows the persistence of data in RDF-XML formats, among others. In addition, it explains how the bank that stores triplets in a native way for resources relationships works and shows examples of services of Aragon Open data that exploit these triplets of data as Aragopedia and Aragon Open Data Pool.

You can then download the full document (only available in Spanish).

This document is part of the series of educational materials and technological articles that Aragón open Data is producing in order to explain how they have deployed different solutions to respond to the needs for location, access and reuse of the different sets of data. You can complete your reading with another volume in the series: "How to implement CKAN: real case of the Aragon Open Data portal".