VoID-graph: Visualize Linked Datasets on the Web

Abstract: The Linked Open Data (LOD) cloud diagram is a picture that helps us grasp the contents and the links of globally available data sets. Such diagram has been a powerful dissemination method for the Linked Data movement, allowing people to glance at the size and structure of this distributed, interconnected database. However, generating such image for third-party datasets can be a quite complex task as it requires the installation and understanding of a variety of tools which are not easy to setup. In this paper we present VoID-graph (http://lmatteis.github.io/void-graph/), a standalone web-tool that, given a VoID description, can visualize a diagram similar to the LOD cloud. It is novel because the diagram is autonomously shaped from VoID descriptions directly within a Web-browser, which doesn't require any server cooperation. This makes it not only easy to use, as no installation or configuration is required, but also makes it more sustainable, as it is built using Open Web standards such as JavaScript and SVG.