Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

In this paper we suggest the novel URI scheme db for identifying not only databases, but also their schema and data components like tables or columns. One of the features of this scheme is that it may not only be used for relational database systems, but for virtually any type of database or data source. We therefore have combined the advantages of both global uniqueness of URIs and the high flexibility of knowledge representation with RDF as part of the Semantic Web. With this novel identifier we are now able to enhance every data record exchanged between databases with metadata: an exact and identifying location of that data in the data source. As a result not only the system administrator is able to backtrack the data to its exact position in the data source but also the database system itself.