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Linked Data
Wikibase is a software stack that allows storing linked data. Linked data is data that follows two principles.
- Data is available as sematic triples.
- Data points use Internationlized Resource Identifiers (IRI)
Semantic triples
Core to link data is the concept of semantic triples. In relational databases, data is stored in tables. Spreadsheet also use a tabular structure to capture data. A semantic triple, however can be seen as a statement.
The following record in tabular data |book title|author| |–|–| | The origin of species | Charles Darwin | can also be described as the following semantic triple in linked data
graph LR
book[The origin of species] -- has author --> author[Charles Darwin]
The benefit of having the data as triples is that combining various datasets becomes straight forward. Combining our book table with the following data on the author.
| person | data of birth | birthplace |
|---|---|---|
| Charles Darwin | 12 February 1809 | The Mount, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England |
graph LR
book[The origin of species] -- has author --> author[Charles Darwin]
author -- birthdate --> dob[12 February 1809]
author -- birthplace --> bp[The Mount Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England]
When trying to merge the two tables a matching collumn between the two tables need to be defined and the columns