The Semantic Web is a Web of Data — of dates and titles and part numbers and chemical properties and any other data one might conceive of. The collection of Semantic Web technologies (RDF, OWL, SKOS, SPARQL, etc.) provides an environment where application can query that data, draw inferences using vocabularies, etc.
     
However, to make the Web of Data a reality, it is important to have the huge amount of data on the Web available in a standard format, reachable and manageable by Semantic Web tools. Furthermore, not only does the Semantic Web need access to data, but relationships among data should be made available, too, to create a Web of Data (as opposed to a sheer collection of datasets). This collection of interrelated datasets on the Web can also be referred to as Linked Data.

To achieve and create Linked Data, technologies should be available for a common format (RDF), to make either conversion or on-the-fly access to existing databases (relational, XML, HTML, etc). It is also important to be able to setup query endpoints to access that data more conveniently. W3C provides a palette of technologies (RDF, GRDDL, POWDER, RDFa, the upcoming R2RML, RIF, SPARQL) to get access to the data.                         

Linked Data lies at the heart of what Semantic Web is all about: large scale integration of, and reasoning on, data on the Web. Almost all applications listed in, say collection of Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Cases are essentially based on the accessibility of, and integration of Linked Data at various level of complexities.