[ckan-discuss] OGDI

Thu Mar 31 14:36:01 BST 2011

Hi,

This is my first e-mail on the CKAN list, so let's first introduce myself. My name is Hans Loomans. I'm living in the Netherlands and studying Information Management at Tilburg University. Besides that, I'm asked by Microsoft to work on a European Open Data project that Microsoft is running. 

Microsoft developed an Open Source project named OGDI [1] running on the Windows Azure cloud platform [2] to expose Open Government Data through the OData protocol [3]. The main component of the platform is a data service, which exposes Open Data thru XML, JSON or as a flat file. This way developers can use this API to retrieve and query data and use it in their application across different platforms. On the project's website sample code is offered for numerous platforms like PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript and .NET. although written in C#, the project itself is available as open source and can be adjusted to fit specific demands.

As CKAN is focused at indexing the available data sources, there might be an opportunity to see if OGDI can be a starting point for governments exposing data in a more developer-friendly way, beyond the level of offering flat file downloads. I'd love to get feedback and find out if there are opportunities to work together and publish more data in a more transparent way.

Kind regards,
Hans Loomans 

Hans Loomans | European Open Government Data Initiative govdata.eu | Microsoft Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 500 2543 | Mobile: +31 6 2949 9680 | E-mail: v-haloom at microsoft.com

[1] Source code: ogdi.codeplex.net, More info: www.govdata.eu, Info for developers: dev.govdata.eu
[2] www.azure.com
[3] www.odata.org