LinkDB: A probabilistic linkage database system

Entity linkage deals with the problem of identifying whether two pieces of information represent the same real world object. The traditional methodology computes the similarity among the entities, and then merges those with similarity above some specific threshold. We demonstrate LinkDB, an original entity storage and querying system that deals with the entity linkage problem in a novel way. LinkDB is a probabilistic linkage database that uses existing linkage techniques to generate linkages among entities, but instead of performing the merges based on these linkages, it stores them alongside the data and performs only the required merges at run-time, by effectively taking into consideration the query specifications. We explain the technical challenges behind this kind of query answering, and we show how this new mechanism is able to provide answers that traditional entity linkage mechanisms cannot.