Understanding Linked Open Data as a Web-Scale Database

While Linked Open Data (LOD) has gained much attention in the recent years, requirements and the challenges concerning its usage from a database perspective are lacking. We argue that such a perspective is crucial for increasing acceptance of LOD. In this paper, we compare the characteristics and constraints of relational databases with LOD, trying to understand the latter as a Web-scale database. We propose LOD-specific requirements beyond the established database rules and highlight research challenges, aiming to combine future efforts of the database research community and the Linked Data research community in this area.