[ckan-dev] Feature: new system checkin / status API

[Friedrich Lindenberg]

Hi,

I think this is a technological solution to a largely social problem
that we should manage instead of coding it. I think the value of
having the CKAN install telling me that it is around is just much
smaller than having an actual conversation with its owner (and keeping
a list of those as we do internally). Its perfectly legitimate to use
CKAN in a closed an non-reported way and I know of several such
deployments. Builidng in a call-home feature costs us time while not
producing much value for our users, I think.

- Friedrich

On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Seb Bacon <seb.bacon at okfn.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> For various reasons it's useful and/or important to have a list of
> installed CKANs and preferably an admin contact for it too.
>
> I propose a new config flag "report_existence" which when enabled,
> pings a central CKAN server to register itself.  It should have some
> kind of privacy text associated with it to clearly state what is
> reported if set.  The basic registration process would register the
> site admin email address, the site name, the site domain name, and the
> reporting IP address (in case they've set up the site domain name
> wrongly).
>
> An API call would allow us to check the health of the system, update
> site name, domain, and admin contact at regular intervals.
>
> We would also write a simple central registry which lists all systems,
> and perhaps adds some interesting stats about the systems taken from
> their APIs.  When the registry can't contact a site, it should email
> the administrator and ask them to either click on a link to remove the
> site from the registry, or update the site config file to correct it.
>
> We will need to think what to do for existing systems when they are
> upgraded, w.r.t. privacy implications.  Perhaps fire off an email to
> the administrator telling them that their site has checked in with the
> registry, and telling them how to opt out if they like.
>
> Finally, the central registry should probably have a way of manually
> adding extra systems that aren't checking in because they've not been
> upgraded.
>
> How does that sound?  Pending full agreement about CEPs, I will write
> up a seb-CEP as a test, if we think this is a good idea :)
>
> Seb
>
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