Only one month after the release of version 1.00, OpenCorporates was the first to deliver an implementation of the Core Business Vocabulary. The Core Business Vocabulary is a simplified, reusable and extensible data model that captures the fundamental characteristics of a legal entity, e.g. the legal name, the activity, address, etc.
OpenCorporates makes available information for more than 43 million companies in 50 jurisdictions and is the largest openly licensed database of companies in the world. Additionally, through its open API, OpenCorporates makes the metadata of the companies available in different formalisms, including JSON, XML and RDF.
OpenCorporates has implemented a feature enabling users to export a company's description metadata that conforms to the Core Business specification. For instance, when browsing the British Olympic Foundation page, data of the organisation can be exported in RDF described using the Core Business Vocabulary via a simple click at the bottom of the page.
According to Chris Taggart, Co-founder and CEO of OpenCorporates, “The implementation was fairly easy, all we needed to do was to adapt the current Ruby on Rails RDF export template, to match the specifications of the Core Business Vocabulary. The distinguishing feature of the Core Business Vocabulary is that it recognises the special meaning of the legal identifier attributed to the business by the official company register“
Mr Taggart argues that the real value of this work will be revealed once people start using it. He says: “I hope to see a number of implementations appear soon, for example putting company data on a map. I hope that the Core Business Vocabulary can become a common semantic standard for exchanging information with business registers“
The adoption of Core Business Vocabulary by OpenCorporates is a first good achievement: more than 43 million businesses have now been described with it.
The ISA Programme will continue encouraging and assisting interested parties, such as business registers across Europe, to align their data models with the Core Business Vocabulary.
To know more
- http://opencorporates.com
- http://blog.opencorporates.com/2012/02/22/3-reasons-why-the-eus-new-business-vocabulary-is-so-important/
- https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/solution/registered-organization-vocabulary
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