Linklaters is one of the world’s leading global law firms. The firm has a wealth of high value information held within our systems however due to the nature of these systems it is not always easy to leverage this value. Our goal was to improve decision making across the firm by transforming access to and ability to query data. To do this we wanted a solution that would combine our information, was easy to extend in an iterative fashion and would leverage our existing investment in business intelligence. To achieve this we chose to create a graph based warehouse using Linked Data. Data from our SAP Business Warehouse was combined with flat file and XML feeds from our systems of record and transformed into RDF via ETL services that loaded it into a triple store. To provide simple integration with our existing environment a SPARQL to OData service was deployed creating an OData compliant endpoint. Finally a model driven, mobile friendly, user interface was created allowing users to query, review results and explore the underlying graph. This talk will describe the approach we took and the lessons learnt.
Ben holds the position of Data & Information Architect at Linklaters LLP where he is leading efforts to enhance the Information Discovery capabilities across structured and unstructured information sources within the firm by blending semantic & AI technologies.
Prior to this Ben worked in the area of Information and Knowledge Management for Pfizer R&D. During this time he lead unification of data access and mining, developed a global data/information governance team, introduced Enterprise 2.0 tools and delivered knowledge management frameworks that enhanced collaboration and communication.
