3.4 Data Federation
One of the problems with existing databases is that the data exists in silos of
isolation. The individual databases are difficult to merge and there is general difficulty in sharing data because of a lack of universal agreement on the database
schema, column names, etc. A fundamental aspect of the semantic web is its ability
to federate data, i.e. make data available globally. This comes about because of the
global data standards that have been set, because one can merge individual
ontologies easily and because two separate graph databases can be merged just by
adding a single link (predicate) from one graph to another (Fig. 14).
An elementary example of this federation is available at the Chemical Semantics
portal by clicking on the Data Federation Tab. If the molecule for the current
publication is Methyl Chloride, then clicking on the tab brings up something like
that shown in Fig. 15.
This displays the information about Methyl Chloride that exists at the
ChemSpider site of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Chemical
Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) site of the European Molecular Biology Lab
(EMBI-EBI).
Fig. 14 List of portal publications
Fig. 15 Federation of a portal publication
A Portal for Quantum Chemistry Data …
25
One of the problems with existing databases is that the data exists in silos of
isolation. The individual databases are difficult to merge and there is general difficulty in sharing data because of a lack of universal agreement on the database
schema, column names, etc. A fundamental aspect of the semantic web is its ability
to federate data, i.e. make data available globally. This comes about because of the
global data standards that have been set, because one can merge individual
ontologies easily and because two separate graph databases can be merged just by
adding a single link (predicate) from one graph to another (Fig. 14).
An elementary example of this federation is available at the Chemical Semantics
portal by clicking on the Data Federation Tab. If the molecule for the current
publication is Methyl Chloride, then clicking on the tab brings up something like
that shown in Fig. 15.
This displays the information about Methyl Chloride that exists at the
ChemSpider site of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and the Chemical
Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) site of the European Molecular Biology Lab
(EMBI-EBI).
Fig. 14 List of portal publications
Fig. 15 Federation of a portal publication
A Portal for Quantum Chemistry Data …
25