[ckan-discuss] Introducing Odessa, a CKAN metadata repository

Fri Oct 25 10:08:31 BST 2013

Mark,

The Ronald project does seem to have some overlap with Odessa. It wasn't clear from the video on Martin's blog what's going on in the shell script versus the R library. I would love to hear more and see how we can collaborate.

One thought I had was whether it would be possible to auto-generate binding files when datasets are uploaded to a CKAN instance (maybe as a plugin). Then it would be even easier to connect datasets together. 

Looking forward to meeting up tomorrow.

Warm Regards,
Brian

•••••
Brian Lee Yung Rowe
Founder, Zato Novo
Professor 

On Oct 24, 2013, at 10:46 AM, Mark Wainwright <mark.wainwright at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> This sounds like a really interesting project. Open data portals are
> only any use if people can and do use the data, and anything which
> makes that significantly easier is a great addition to the landscape.
> If CKAN is useful to help build it, that's a bonus :-)
> 
> Martin Keegan started working on a similar project[1] last year, but I
> don't think it's active at the moment.
> 
> I'm hoping to meet up and chat with Brian on Saturday while he's in Cambridge.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> [1] http://blog.ucant.org/?p=393
> 
> 
> On 22/10/2013, Brian Lee Yung Rowe <rowe at muxspace.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> I'm a relative newcomer to the open data world. I have a background in
>> quantitative analysis (mostly in finance) and am a professor in a graduate
>> program for data analytics. I've been watching the growth of open data with
>> interest as the potential for conducting useful and interesting research
>> with all this data is quite compelling. With so many repositories offering
>> data, finding data is no longer the challenge it used to be. Instead the
>> challenges I've had with actually using the data are two-fold: transforming
>> datasets into analysis-friendly formats, and transforming indices into a
>> common format to join datasets together. I have been focused on addressing
>> the second challenge, so as to make it easier for my students to perform
>> analysis without getting bogged down in data cleaning and manipulation.
>> 
>> This is the motivation for Odessa, a CKAN instance with a corresponding R
>> package. In essence, each dataset registered on Odessa is a package
>> containing a reference to actual data plus a metadata file that describes
>> the indices available in the dataset. I use a combination of regular
>> expressions and a graph construction to make automatic inferences about how
>> to join datasets together. The idea is that you tell the library which
>> datasets to connect, and it figures out how to do it. The secondary idea is
>> that only one person needs to create a metadata file for a given dataset and
>> then anyone in the community has access to it via the shared platform.
>> 
>> The overall framework is alpha-level maturity, but I thought it would be
>> helpful to get some first impressions and feedback on how useful people
>> think this idea is and what sorts of features/functionality are of interest.
>> The CKAN instance is located at http://odessa.zatonovo.com/ and the R
>> package is at https://github.com/zatonovo/odessa. I have plans for adding a
>> corresponding Python implementation in addition to adding more inference
>> capabilities. I'm actively looking for case studies to work on, so if you
>> have any thoughts, please let me know.
>> 
>> Warm Regards,
>> Brian Rowe
>> 
>> 
>> P.S. I hope this isn't too presumptuous, but I will be in London/Cambridge
>> Wednesday - Sunday if anybody in that neck of the woods is interested in
>> discussing any of this in person.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Business development and user engagement manager
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> Empowering through Open Knowledge
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