Introduction to linked data and its lifecycle on the web

Abstract

With Linked Data, a very pragmatic approach towards achieving the vision of the Semantic Web has gained some traction in the last years. The term Linked Data refers to a set of best practices for publishing and interlinking structured data on the Web. While many standards, methods and technologies developed within by the Semantic Web community are applicable for Linked Data, there are also a number of specific characteristics of Linked Data, which have to be considered. In this article we introduce the main concepts of Linked Data. We present an overview of the Linked Data lifecycle and discuss individual approaches as well as the state-of-the-art with regard to extraction, authoring, linking, enrichment as well as quality of Linked Data. We conclude the chapter with a discussion of issues, limitations and further research and development challenges of Linked Data. This article is an updated version of a similar lecture given at Reasoning Web Summer School 2011. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.