Integrating Financial Data Using Semantic Web for Improved Visibility

Abstract

The Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data principles enable information integration and datainteroperability at syntactic and semantic levels. This will lead to having a large amount of integrated data with increased visibility leading to the discovery and synthesis of knowledge to address financial issues. In this paper, we illustrate the implementation of the Financial Linked Data using the Linked Data principle within the financial domain. The use of XBRL (XML-based business reporting language)by various companies to generate their financial data has enabled us to obtain a standardized and uniform body of financial data. We utilize this format to link business facts to corresponding reports and then publish these data using Linked Data principles. Furthermore, financial data can be interlinked with other relevant datasets by creating semantic relationships. We believe that such linkage between various datasets represents an important step in achieving data transparency which in turn establishes a basis for making profitable decisions in the future.