About LEI
LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) is a global identifier designed for the unambiguous, credible and unique identification of distinct Legal Entities participating in transactions across global markets.
In its most simplistic sense, an LEI is a 20-character code based on the ISO 17442 standard. For example, the LEI code for the European Central Bank reads:
549300DTUYXVMJXZNY75
The LEI code provides the most fundamental information about a Legal Entity by answering two basic questions concerning the entity: “who is who” and “who owns whom”.
Once assigned, an LEI code is bound to that legal entity for its entire existence on the market.
GRAPHCHAIN IMPLEMENTATION IN LEI
- THE SEMANTIC ARCHITECTURE OF LEI.INFO
The architecture of LEI.INFO service is based on the transformation of the standard XML-based data model used by the LEI system (called LEI CDF) to the modern RDF-based Semantic Data Model.
In addition to that, LEI.INFO is implemented according to the rules of Linked Open Data principles (see: Linked Data on W3C site)
These rules allow for the single LEI identifier (the LEI URI), for example:
http://lei.info/254900UIZS15MTA7H075
to be used as a reference to:
- visual information in the web page,
- data for software agents and
- QR-CODE for physical media (like paper prints)
(A note: the last reference goes beyond classical Linked Data principles)
This is illustrated in the following diagram:
DATA FORMATS AVAILABLE
When the LEI URI is used to request data, it can be returned in multiple formats according to the needs of the user. The choice of the format is specified by the proper HTTP Accept Header of your request:
- application/rdf+xml
- application/x-turtle
- application/n-triples
- application/trig
- text/rdf+n3
- application/n-quads
- application/ld+json
- application/owl+xml
- text/turtle
- application/trix
- text/n3
- text/plain
- text/application/x-nquads
- text/xml
(A note: the last request “text/xml” returns the original LEI CDF format for the given LEI)