Consolidating user-defined concepts with StYLiD

Abstract

Information sharing can be effective with structured data. However, there are several challenges for having structured data on the web. Creating structured concept definitions is difficult and multiple conceptualizations may exist due to different user requirements and preferences. We propose consolidating multiple concept definitions into a unified virtual concept and formalize our approach. We have implemented a system called StYLiD to realize this. StYLiD is a social software for sharing a wide variety of structured data. Users can freely define their own structured concepts. The system consolidates multiple definitions for the same concept by different users. Attributes of the multiple concept versions are aligned semi-automatically to provide a unified view. It provides a flexible interface for easy concept definition and data contribution. Popular concepts gradually emerge from the cloud of concepts while concepts evolve incrementally. StYLiD supports linked data by interlinking data instances including external resources like Wikipedia. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.