Namespaces in LINDAS

In the Linked Data universe, the use of namespaces helps to organize the identifiers of subjects (data points) and predicates (attributes). A well-defined and organized common namespace for all public and also internal data at the level of the Swiss Confederation administration brings a variety of benefits:

  • A well-constructed namespace leads to stable and reliable URIs.
  • Stable URIs are important for the reuse of data in other projects and applications.
  • A well and logically organized namespace leads to data being self-describing across the namespace. This leads to a reduced need for external documentation to discover the data.
  • A common contract on the status and availability of data in specific namespaces can be defined and communicated.

The namespace ld.admin.ch

The Standard I003 - Chapter 2.3.2 defines ld.admin.ch as the namespace for all Linked Data publications under the authority of the Federal Administration.

Anatomy of a namespace

The namespace contains the subdomains, domain and path.

Structure of the namespaces

            ld.admin.ch ->              central entities for Switzerland
            ld.admin.ch/vocabulary/ ->  controlled vocabularies for Switzerland
     schema.ld.admin.ch -> specific     ontologies for Switzerland

Example for agricultural data

agriculture.ld.admin.ch/ ->             central entities for agriculture
agriculture.ld.admin.ch/vocabulary/ ->  controlled vocabularies for agriculture

Theme-based subdomains

The following table lists the already used and intended subdomains. If there is no suitable theme for a new dataset, this can be requested via LINDAS Support. According to I003 (only available in German), the final decision on the use of subdomains lies with the Federal Chancellery (BK).

*.ld.admin.ch Topics Examples Offices
agriculture.ld.admin.ch Agriculture FOAG, Agroscope
culture.ld.admin.ch Culture NL
education.ld.admin.ch Education SFA
energy.ld.admin.ch Energy Elcom, SFOE
environment.ld.admin.ch Environment FOEN
finance.ld.admin.ch Finance SFA
geo.ld.admin.ch Geodata swisstopo
law.ld.admin.ch Legal Texts BK
politics.ld.admin.ch Politics BK
register.ld.admin.ch Existing Registers (topic-independent) FOJ, SFA, BK