CSVImport

Statistical data on the web is often published as Excel sheets. Although they have the advantage of being easily readable by humans, they cannot be queried efficiently. Also it is difficult to integrate with other datasets, which may be in different formats. Our approach is to convert the data into a single data model – RDF. But in these datasets, a single statistical value is described in several dimensions. Thus a simple row-based transformation is not possible. Therefore, we use The RDF Data Cube vocabulary for the conversion as it is designed particularly to represent multidimensional statistical data using RDF. Transforming CSV to RDF in a fully automated way is not feasible as there may be dimensions encoded in the heading or label of a sheet. Therefore, we introduce a semi-automated approach as a plugin in OntoWiki.