A semantic web data space is a container for domain specific portable data, which is provided in human and/or machine friendly structures. Data in a data space can be referenced by an identifier, and is linked with other data across spaces and domains, and thus can be viewed in an object-oriented fashion.
The underlying paradigm brings together ideas and technologies from various sources:
The approach can be applied to both Web based systems and desktop-based systems.
Data in data spaces are linked across spaces and domains to enhance the meaning of internal data, this supports the work of the linked data project which is part of the Semantic Web effort. This has the benefit of being a useful point for querying about information across domains, and assists the development of a Web of Data.
A data space should be fully supportive of data portability such as that advocated by the DataPortability project. This means that an object in a data space should be movable and should also have the ability to be referenced using an identifier such as a uniform resource identifier.