Open Data Integration: Visualization as an Asset

摘要

For several years, and even decades, data integration has been a major problem in computer sciences. When it becomes necessary to process information from different data sources, several problems may appear, making the process of integration more difficult. Nowadays, more and more information is being sent and received and is made available on the Web and Data Integration is becoming even more important. This is especially the case in the emerging trend of Open Data (OD). Integrating data from public entities can be a difficult process. Large quantities of datasets are made available. However, an important level of heterogeneity may also exist: Datasets exist in different formats, forms and shapes. While it is important to be able to access this information, it would also be completely useless if we were not able to interpret it. Information Visualization may be an important tool to help the OD integration process. This paper presents problems and barriers which can be encountered in the data integration process, and, more specifically, in the OD integration process. The paper also describes how Information Visualization can be used to facilitate the integration of OD and make the procedure more effective, friendlier, and faster.