Visual Query Formulation for Linked Open Data: The Norwegian Entity Registry Case

The cloud of Linked Open Data is steadily growing, yet it remains largely inaccessible to the general public, due to the technical barrier posed by the requirement to know a formal query language such as SPARQL. In this article, we present a new approach for visual query formulation toward arbitrary SPARQL endpoints, and we show a working prototype developed to improve the accessibility to Linked Open Data sources for non-computer experts. We show how the prototype can be employed to simplify access to governmental Linked Open Data with a case study from the Norwegian Entity Registry.