[ckan-dev] Deprecated: related items (Apps & Ideas)

Fri Sep 11 13:23:29 UTC 2015

Steven,

Interesting! I'd love to believe it, but I struggle it is the case yet.
People have long talked about machines accessing data catalogues, but
actual use seems low. There's been various analyses of catalogues
themselves, which is good, but of limited interest. And there is use in
using the catalogue to provide a backup/cache of datasets en-masse. But
it's problematic to automatically put quantities of datasets into databases
due to poor CSVs, rareness of schemas etc. (although you could look at the
well-curated catalogues or ones that require table-ification up-front like
Socrata, or linked data for where this isn't so much a problem). And I
imagine you could do some automatic "this dataset could be easily joined
with this other dataset" discovery using a catalogue, or maybe discovering
2 properties in different datasets that correlate. But I kind of feel there
should be something more achievable with machines and a data catalogue.

Maybe I'm being glass-half-empty though... Do you have some ideas or
examples you can share with us, about where data catalogues are going? Or
was there something else behind this comment?

Dave

On 11 September 2015 at 13:06, Steven De Costa <
steven.decosta at linkdigital.com.au> wrote:

> +1 re 'as an aside' Machines are the primary users...
>
> *STEVEN DE COSTA *|
> *EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR*www.linkdigital.com.au
>
>
>
> On 11 September 2015 at 21:32, David Read <david.read at hackneyworkshop.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Carl,
>>
>> Related Items was not designed for relating datasets to other datasets,
>> but I see that you could use it for that. There are two alternatives that
>> you could use to replace it, though:
>>
>> 1. It would be simple to have an extra field instead. It's well
>> documented how to add a field to the form & underlying schema and you just
>> need to adjust the template to display it on the dataset page.
>> 2. You could take advantage of the 'package relationships' model that
>> exists in CKAN but has no UI. Again you need to adjust the form, schema &
>> dataset view template.
>>
>> As an aside, I've struggled to find compelling use cases to show
>> relationships between datasets. Some people talk about wanting to show
>> 'parent/child' relationships, or 'related to' or 'is similar to'. But the
>> nature of the relationship always seemed difficult to define clearly in a
>> way that is useful for datasets en mass. I think they tend to be
>> conveniences for the human user, rather than useful machine-readable
>> metadata.
>>
>> So what might be more appropriate is to show next to a dataset other
>> similar datasets, which is automatically filled based on similarity in the
>> metadata record. So two with similar titles because they are about the same
>> thing, would reference each other. As might two that share an ArcGIS layer.
>>
>> David
>>
>> On 11 September 2015 at 11:50, Carl Lange <carl at derilinx.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> After deprecation, is there another feature planned to allow relation of
>>> datasets to one another? For example, I have two datasets which are of the
>>> same ArcGIS layer, and I'd like to 'relate' them so that end users are able
>>> to see that they are connected at the source. Removing apps, dataviz etc
>>> from this feature makes sense, but relating datasets is still a useful
>>> feature.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Carl
>>>
>>>
>>> On 4 September 2015 at 14:21, Steven De Costa <
>>> steven.decosta at linkdigital.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks David!
>>>>
>>>> I really appreciate this notice AND the approach it represents. CKAN is
>>>> an awesome data management system. I think it will retain this awesome
>>>> status by remaining its focus on core workflows.
>>>>
>>>> The related data use cases is something of a content addition for what
>>>> I'd say are tertiary users of CKAN. Primary are machines, secondary are
>>>> data custodians.
>>>>
>>>> Having this as an extension makes more sense as CKAN continues to be
>>>> adopted for Government open data, open research data and even open private
>>>> sector data.
>>>>
>>>> Plus one and two thumbs up from me. And, big props to the developers
>>>> contributing to the related use case extension as it is very cool :)
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Steven
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Friday, September 4, 2015, David Read <
>>>> david.read at hackneyworkshop.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ! Warning for all CKAN admins !
>>>>>
>>>>> We will be removing the 'related items' feature in the next version of
>>>>> CKAN (v2.5 expected around December). Several sites use this core ckan
>>>>> feature to list "Apps" or "Apps & Ideas".
>>>>>
>>>>> It has been replaced by the ckanext-showcase extension, which allows
>>>>> 'showcasing' apps, vizualizations, news items etc associated with
>>>>> datasets. It includes a paster script to copy existing related items
>>>>> into showcase ones. Since ckanext-showcase works with existing
>>>>> versions of CKAN (2.3+), we suggest all sites migrate in advance of
>>>>> the CKAN 2.5 release.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://github.com/ckan/ckanext-showcase
>>>>>
>>>>> David
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> *STEVEN DE COSTA *|
>>>> *EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR*www.linkdigital.com.au
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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