LOD2 Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data

We are happy to announce version 2.4 of the Silk – Link Discovery Framework for the Web of Data.

The central idea of the Web of Data is to interlink data items using RDF links. However, in practice most data sources are not sufficiently interlinked with related data sources. The Silk Link Discovery FrameworkThe Silk framework is a tool for discovering relationships between data items within different Linked Data sources. Data publishers can use Silk to set RDF links from their data sources to other data sources on the Web. ( addresses this problem by providing tools to generate links between data items based on user-provided link specifications. It can be used by data publishers to generate links between datasets as well as by Linked Data consumers to augment Web data with additional RDF links.

Link specifications can either be written manually or developed using the new Silk Workbench. The SilkThe Silk framework is a tool for discovering relationships between data items within different Linked Data sources. Data publishers can use Silk to set RDF links from their data sources to other data sources on the Web. ( Workbench, is a web application which guides the user through the process of interlinking different data sources. It’s being shipped with the 2.4 version of Silk.

1. Silk Single Machine is used to generate RDF links on a single machine. The datasets that should be interlinked can either reside on
   the same machine or on remote machines which are accessed via the SPARQL protocol. Silk Single Machine provides multithreading and
   caching. In addition, the performance can be further enhanced using an optional blocking feature.
2. Silk Server can be used as an identity resolution component within applications that consume Linked Data from the Web. Silk Server
   provides an HTTP APIAn application programming interface (API) is an interface implemented by a software program to enable interaction with other software, similar to the way a user interface facilitates interaction between humans and computers. APIs are implemented by applications, libraries and operating systems ... for matching instances from an incoming stream of RDF data while keeping track of known entities. It can be used for
   instance together with a Linked Data crawler to populate a local duplicate-free cache with data from the Web.
3. Silk MapReduce is used to generate RDF links between datasets using a cluster of multiple machines. Silk MapReduce is based on Hadoop and
   can for instance be run on AmazonAmazon. com, Inc. is a US-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc. , as of January 2010. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. com, Inc. ... Elastic MapReduce. Silk MapReduce enables Silk to scale out to very big datasets by distributing the
   link generation to multiple machines.

More information about the Silk frameworkThe Silk framework is a tool for discovering relationships between data items within different Linked Data sources. Data publishers can use Silk to set RDF links from their data sources to other data sources on the Web. (, the Silk Link Specification Language, as well as several examples that demonstrate how Silk is used to set links between different data sources in the LOD cloud is found at:

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/silk/

The Silk framework is provided under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0 and can be downloaded from

http://www4.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/bizer/silk/releases/

The development of Silk was supported by Vulcan Inc.Vulcan Inc. is an investment and project management company founded in 1986 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, to manage his investments. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. as part of its Project Halo and by the EU FP7 project LOD2 – Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data (http://lod2.eu/, Ref. No. 257943).

Thanks to Christian Becker, Michal Murawicki and Andrea Matteini for contributing to the Silk Workbench.

Happy linking,

Robert Isele, Anja JentzschResearch Associate at the Free University of Berlin. (http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/en/institute/pwo/bizer/team/JentzschAnja.html) and Chris Bizer
(FU Berlin)