[ckan-discuss] Package Relationships - remove?

Wed Aug 24 21:47:10 BST 2011

I'm +1 to remove.

Right now this isn't buying anything and we probably want something
different point. I do think that:

a) At some point I'm pretty sure we will need things like "depends on"
or "requires"

b) there is a good use case right now for a more general form of
"connection" which isn't just between datasets but is e.g. from
dataset to external visualization or policy paper. E.g. it would be
really nice to say "this government report at url X uses data from
this dataset" or this visualization at url X uses this dataset (thanks
to Sam Smith for emphasizing the importance of this to me a few months
ago)

c) For derivation and transformation relationships (definitely going
to be important) we need to include resources not just
datasets/packages (maybe *just* resources). This is something that
changed since resources did not really exist when we first implemented
relationships.

Rufus

On 24 August 2011 18:25, David Read <david.read at okfn.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a proposal that we move away from the CKAN feature that
> provides structured links between data packages - the Package
> Relationships feature. I'd love to get some feedback on removing this
> under-used feature.
>
> This feature was implemented in the API 18 months ago, and although
> several use cases were originally proposed, none have really taken
> off. I understand the LOD people found it difficult to use, so simply
> used Package Extra fields for describing the links between packages in
> a flexible way.
>
> This has put us off spending the time to create an edit interface in
> the Web interface (but of course, maybe that has been the problem).
> And it's not a simple part of our data model, requiring some work to
> handle well in our RESTful API throughout the refactor, and yet some
> issues remain which will require a chunk of further work.
>
> So I'm suggesting we get rid of it and collect ideas for a future
> replacement for forking/deriving/relating Resources instead, in a
> Github-style way, as spreadsheets get cleaned up or extended etc.
>
> More details of the use cases that have failed to take off are in the
> CREP here: http://trac.ckan.org/ticket/1289. Please do reply to this
> list with any thoughts.
>
> David
>
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