BackgroundThere is a growing need for efficient and integrated access to databases provided by diverse institutions. Using a linked data design pattern allows the diverse data on the Internet to be linked effectively and accessed efficiently by computers. Previously, we developed the Allie database, which stores pairs of abbreviations and long forms (LFs, or expanded forms) used in the life sciences. LFs define the semantics of abbreviations, and Allie provides a Web-based search service for researchers to look up the LF of an unfamiliar abbreviation. This service encounters two problems. First, it does not display each LF’s definition, which could help the user to disambiguate and learn the abbreviations more easily. Furthermore, there are too many LFs for us to prepare a full dictionary from scratch. On the other hand, DBpedia has made the contents of Wikipedia available in the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which is expected to contain a significant number of entries corresponding to LFs. Therefore, linking the Allie LFs to DBpedia entries may present a solution to the Allie’s problems. This requires a method that is capable of matching large numbers of string pairs within a reasonable period of time because Allie and DBpedia are frequently updated.
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