About

Carbon LDP™ is a Linked Data application server providing read/write access to RDF graph data over RESTful HTTP. It provides a host of features for developing business applications with Linked Data and for simplifying access to the enterprise knowledge graph. As such, it can act as the key system upon which an organization can build in order to capitalize on the benefits of Linked Data. It consolidates the Linked Data ecosystem within an enterprise into one common access point, or server, and exposes the knowledge graph as easily accessible Web resources through a Web API.

Carbon LDP™ enables rapid application development with Linked Data.

Features

We built Carbon LDP™ with a few simple goals. First, we wanted to improve the development process. Next, we wanted to connect information easier and more efficiently. Finally, we built Carbon LDP™ because it’s the platform we always wanted to build on.

All of Carbon LDP™ features provide business value while improving the development experience.

REST API

Access and manage applications and data by URIs using RESTful requests over HTTP (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE). Work with documents in Turtle, RDF XML, or JSON-LD. Everything in Carbon LDP™ is RESTful.

JavaScript / TypeScript SDK

The JavaScript Software Development Kit, available from the npm package manager, allows you to manage RDF data using familiar JavaScript and TypeScript programming techniques and tools. Build for execution within a web browser or Node.js.

Visual Tools

Use time-saving tools in the Workbench, a GUI that helps you visualize and manage applications and data outside of your code. Visualize your document hierarchy and inspect document properties and data.

RDF Native, NoSQL Graph

Data is represented and managed as documents, but stored natively as RDF triples in a NoSQL graph database. Break the shackles of rigid data schemas; add new entities and attributes on the fly. Link data with existing resources within your apps and across the web.

Powerful Data Query

Query for data across multiple documents using the SPARQL query language. Query-down for a broad view from any segment of an application or against individual documents.

W3C Standards Based

Integrate and interoperate with industry tools from leading vendors. Carbon LDP™ is compliant with Semantic Web, Linked Data, HTTP, and other standards from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

History, Development, Team

Carbon LDP™ was born out of a desire to skip some of the boring steps of a development. One of Base22’s original founders was building an app one day and going through the tedious steps required whenever one builds an app. He came up with the idea then for a platform that could automatically complete some of these development steps. From that moment, Carbon LDP™ was born.

Conceptualized initially to act as this foundation, the team quickly realized Carbon LDP™ was capable of much more. Through the evolution, they began to view it as a true Linked Data Platform that could further harness the power of Linked Data. Carbon LDP™ is an exciting product with the power to bring rapid creation, better integration, and easier evolution to any project.

Carbon LDP™ is provided by Base22, a family of engineers, architects, designers and artists who focus on Enterprise Web Evolution to help big global companies tackle big global challenges.

Why Carbon LDP™?

Like many popular NoSQL document-oriented databases, Carbon LDP™ provides the ability to read and write data documents using simple JavaScript objects or JSON.

Carbon LDP™ data is stored in a graph database, which is more advantageous than common document-oriented and traditional relational databases in a variety of cases. Since the data is stored natively in RDF (the Resource Description Framework), Carbon LDP™ makes it easy to model any kind of resources without the need for rigid schemas. Need a new class, instance, property, or relationship? Simply add it on-the-fly. Forget about primary and foreign key relationships. Applications powered by Carbon LDP™ are inherently semantic – capable of linking data with other applications and across the World Wide Web.

Carbon LDP™ turns data graphs into documents so that working with data is like working with web pages – simple.

Each document acts as an end-point that can be queried using the powerful SPARQL semantic query language. To query across all data in a Carbon LDP™ application, you can execute a query on the root document. SPARQL provides a full set
of analytic query operations as well as a graph traversal syntax for graph-centric operations.

Carbon LDP™ provides fine-grained access to the data that exists within and across multiple documents.

Much like web pages, clients can retrieve a Carbon LDP document by URL. However, most web pages are semi-structured and designed to be rendered in a web browser for human consumption. Carbon LDP™ resources are represented by fully
structured data. This makes them both easily transformed into HTML for rendering in a browser and more easily understood and processed by machines. This leads to a host of computational benefits and integration capabilities not afforded by
typical application architectures. Applications powered by Carbon LDP™ are ready for the Semantic Web.

Carbon LDP™ includes a Workbench – a graphical user interface that helps you visualize and manage data outside of your custom application.

The Workbench provides a convenient way to create and list resources. It features a Document Explorer for visualizing the documents, data, and links that exist in your application. It also features a SPARQL Client so
that you can compose queries and inspect data outside of your client-side application code. The Workbench itself is open-source. Developed as a Carbon LDP™ application using Angular, it provides code that developers can use as an example of how to build rich,
single-page applications using popular front-end frameworks and Carbon LDP™.

Linked Data

The concept of Linked Data can and should exist behind the firewall and beyond. Linked Data is a concept that embraces all types of data (structured and unstructured) and allows that data to be connected and related. Linked Data is represented in a graph based model (networks) versus a more rigid table model. Because graphs are networks of information and can be readily connected, they are semantic – they have the ability to be self-describing and can convey statements about what the graph data mean. In short, as relationships grow, the Linked Data structure can infer relationships to extend the knowledge of the data and therefore create a “knowledge graph”.

Our perspective on Linked Data and Carbon LDP™ focuses on Solving problems through 3 building blocks: Creation, Integration, and Evolution.

Create

A development platform for creating data – centric web apps.

Learn more about Creation and Carbon.

Integrate

A unified interface, a unified data model, and a view across all data.

Learn more about Integration and Carbon.

Evolve

Dynamic to the ever-present force of change.

Learn more about Evolution and Carbon.

Creation

Problem #1: Creating Applications

Developing content sites and managing content is relatively easy, but developing data-centric web apps and managing data is hard; requiring more time, more resources, and highly specialized skills.

We want to make it easier for business stakeholders and “everyday” developers to create robust applications that process and manage data rather than just content.

Managing data should be more like managing content – easy.

Integration

Problem #2: Integrating Systems

Systems integration is one of the largest and most common pain points accounting for some of the highest costs in I.T.

We want to make it easier and cheaper to unify disparate data sources and to tie different systems together.

There should be a unified programmatic interface, a unified data model, and a singular and consolidated view across data silos.

Evolution

Problem #3: Evolving Systems with the Business

Most systems are inherently inflexible – modeled in a silo to serve known requirements and difficult to modify, extend, or reuse.

We want to make data more flexible, easier to extend as new requirements arise, and easier to reuse across a variety of disparate systems.

Solutions (living systems) should respond dynamically to the ever-present force of change.

How a Linked Data Platform Can Transform Your Organization

To learn how Carbon and Linked Data are intertwined, download our whitepaper here. If you need help answering more questions please reach out to us so we can help.