Skip to content

Introduction#

Welcome to the Laces Data Platform user manual!

Laces Data Platform (LDP) is a platform to publish, share and access Linked Data. This Linked Data is organized into groups and repositories, which can be managed through the application's user interface, but also accessed through a REST API in order to apply this data within any applications.

Organisation#

All data published within Laces Data Platform is organised in a hierarchical structure, consisting of groups, repositories and publications.

Groups#

Groups form the main structure for all content on the platform. Groups allow you to add structure to your repositories and manage access for other users on a high level. Apart from repositories, groups can also contain nested groups, or subgroups, to further organise your data.

Repositories#

Repositories are the containers for related publications. They often will be dedicated to a single project or purpose.

Publications#

Publications are collections of RDF data. All data of a single publication combined forms a single coherent dataset.

Files#

Non-RDF data is stored as files. Files can be referred to from within publications, which is a feature of the Laces Apps.

Location#

Laces Data Platform uses the hierarchical structure mentioned above to organise its publications. This hierarchy is reflected in the address, or URL, given to each group, repository and/or publications.

Each URL conforms to the following pattern:

https://hub.laces.tech/<group>/<repository>/<publication>

The <group> segment in the URL above, consists of the top-level group and any subgroups within this top-level group. So if the top-level group "semmtech", contains a subgroup "schemas", any repositories inside this subgroup "schemas" will have a URL which starts with:

https://hub.laces.tech/semmtech/schemas/<repository>/<publication>

The <publication> segment can also be created with multiple segments, either for naming purposes or to indicate the version. So if we have a <repository> called "laces", which has a "specifications" publication with version "202107021100", then the URL becomes:

https://hub.laces.tech/semmtech/schemas/laces/specifications/versions/202107021100

Versioning#

Laces Data Platform supports four different versioning modes. Versioning mode should be defined upon publishing, and cannot be changed for a publication once set.

  • None: no versioning is used, in case you publish to the same location, your previous publication will be overwritten (default mode).
  • Incremental: auto-incremental numbering for each subsequent version, e.g. 1, 2, 3, etc.
  • Datetime: uses the current date and time as the version identifier, i.e. 202010231305 (October 23, 2020 at 13:05)
  • Custom: free text label to identify a version, e.g. red, blue, vanilla, etc.

Access#

In order to access Laces Data Platform and its content, a user account is required. Once an account has been created, users can either explore Laces Data Platform using a web browser or by connecting third party applications using API or SPARQL endpoints. For more information on getting access, refer to Getting started.