The euBusinessGraph ontology: A lightweight ontology for harmonizing basic company information

Company data, ranging from basic company information such as company name(s) and incorporation date to complex balance sheets and personal data about directors and shareholders, are the foundation that many data value chains depend upon in various sectors (e.g., business information, marketing and sales, etc.). Company data becomes a valuable asset when data is collected and integrated from a variety of sources, both authoritative (e.g., national business registers) and non-authoritative (e.g., company websites). Company data integration is however a difficult task primarily due to the heterogeneity and complexity of company data, and the lack of generally agreed upon semantic descriptions of the concepts in this domain. In this article, we introduce the euBusinessGraph ontology as a lightweight mechanism for harmonising company data for the purpose of aggregating, linking, provisioning and analysing basic company data. The article provides an overview of the related work, ontology scope, ontology development process, explanations of core concepts and relationships, and the implementation of the ontology. Furthermore, we present scenarios where the ontology was used, among others, for publishing company data (business knowledge graph) and for comparing data from various company data providers. The euBusinessGraph ontology serves as an asset not only for enabling various tasks related to company data but also on which various extensions can be built upon.publishedVersio

A Visual Data Profiling Tool for Data Preparation

In this paper, we propose a tool that implements visual data profiling capabilities for data preparation – an essential step in the process of linked data generation. Our tool features visual data profiling – a technique that identifies and visualizes potential data quality issues, relevant data cleaning functions, and an interactive spreadsheet table view. The proposed demonstration of the tool will focus on the use of visual data profiling in a scenario of cleaning and transforming tabular weather data – as a pre-processing step for linked data generation.publishedVersio

Usability of visual data profiling in data cleaning and transformation

This paper proposes an approach for using visual data profiling in tabular data cleaning and transformation processes. Visual data profiling is the statistical assessment of datasets to identify and visualize potential quality issues. The proposed approach was implemented in a software prototype and empirically validated in a usability study to determine to what extent visual data profiling is useful and how easy it is to use by data scientists. The study involved 24 users in a comparative usability test and 4 expert reviewers in cognitive walkthroughs. The evaluation results show that users find visual data profiling capabilities to be useful and easy to use in the process of data cleaning and transformation.acceptedVersio

DataGraft beta v2: New features and capabilities

In this demonstrator, we will introduce the latest features and capabil-ities added to DataGraft – a Data-as-a-Service platform for data preparation and knowledge graph generation. DataGraft provides data transformation, publishing and hosting capabilities that aim to simplify the data publishing lifecycle for data workers (i.e., Open Data publishers, Linked Data developers, data scientists). This demonstrator highlights the recent features added to DataGraft by exempli-fying data publication of statistical data – going from the raw data published at a public portal to published and accessible Linked Data with the help of the tools and features of the platform.publishedVersio

Linked Data Exploration With RDF Surveyor

Linked Data exploration is an essential task in the process of understanding, assessing, and using datasets made available in the Resource Description Framework (RDF) format. Current solutions for exploration of RDF data are mainly targeted at Semantic Web experts, require non-trivial deployments, and do not scale to the increasing amounts of data published in RDF. The lack of simple, intuitive, and efficient solutions for exploring RDF data, especially for lay users, is the main motivation behind the work presented in this paper. We propose RDF Surveyor, an easy-to-use and lightweight tool for exploring RDF datasets. Its visual interface hides the intricacies of Semantic Web technologies from the user, while providing intuitive overviews of datasets, class navigation, and visualization of class instances. Furthermore, RDF Surveyor does not require any installation and can handle large datasets such as DBpedia. We provide a detailed overview of RDF Surveyor and illustrate its capabilities in two different scenarios. We also analyze the uptake, performance and usability of RDF Surveyor, showing its suitability for exploring Linked Data at scale

The euBusinessGraph Ontology: a Lightweight Ontology for Harmonizing Basic Company Information

Company data, ranging from basic company information such as company name(s) and incorporation date to complex balance sheets and personal data about directors and shareholders, are the foundation that many data value chains depend upon in various sectors (e.g., business information, marketing and sales, etc.). Company data becomes a valuable asset when data is collected and integrated from a variety of sources, both authoritative (e.g., national business registers) and non-authoritative (e.g., company websites). Company data integration is however a difficult task primarily due to the heterogeneity and complexity of company data, and the lack of generally agreed upon semantic descriptions of the concepts in this domain. In this article, we introduce the euBusinessGraph ontology as a lightweight mechanism for harmonising company data for the purpose of aggregating, linking, provisioning and analysing basic company data. The article provides an overview of the related work, ontology scope, ontology development process, explanations of core concepts and relationships, and the implementation of the ontology. Furthermore, we present scenarios where the ontology was used, among others, for publishing company data (business knowledge graph) and for comparing data from various company data providers. The euBusinessGraph ontology serves as an asset not only for enabling various tasks related to company data but also on which various extensions can be built upon