The Information Workbench – A Platform for Linked Data Applications

In this system paper, we describe the Information Workbench, a platform for developing Linked Data applications. The platform features a highly customizable user interface to present the data to the users and realize different interaction mechanisms. UI development is based on Semantic Wiki technologies, enriched with a large set of widgets for data access, navigation, exploration, visualization, data authoring, analytics, as well as data mashups with external data sources. Widgets can be easily embedded into Semantic Wiki pages in a fully declarative way using a simple wiki-based syntax. In this way, the structure and behavior of the user interface can be easily customized to create domainand application-specific solutions with little effort. Our paper describes the technical architecture of the Information Workbench platform, particularly focusing on the tight coupling between the domain-specific semantic data model and the elements of the user interface, which in turn facilitates UI customization. Furthermore, we describe examples of applying the Information Workbench platform to build applications with semantic interfaces for real-world use case scenarios in different domains, including data center management and semantic content publishing.