[ddj] data-driven-journalism Digest, Vol 50, Issue 11

Kathryn Breen kathy.breen139 at gmail.com
Thu May 28 10:52:21 UTC 2015


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> On May 28, 2015, at 6:26 AM, data-driven-journalism-request at lists.okfn.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: GUI database tools for newsrooms
>      (Alessio Cimarelli | Dataninja.it)
>   2. Re: GUI database tools for newsrooms (Max Harlow)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 10:24:09 +0200
> From: "Alessio Cimarelli | Dataninja.it" <jenkin at dataninja.it>
> To: "List about Data Driven Journalism and Open Data in Journalism."
>    <data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [ddj] GUI database tools for newsrooms
> Message-ID:
>    <CAL6sd1gAsGjnHDCyshwW+9GT3_h2O_Q46wbyrNNZ19k7sYQYMg at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Hi Sam,
> 
> if you want to stay in the SQL world, you can use a relational db on the
> back-end (postgresql, but also mysql),
> queried by a simple server-side application (for example using php
> language).
> 
> The key part of this simple stack is on the front-end: you can expose to
> your users a graphical query builder
> to write the WHERE clause of an arbitrary sql statement simply pointing and
> clicking: http://mistic100.github.io/jQuery-QueryBuilder/.
> 
> Users can build their own query (only WHERE clause, server-side validation
> is required here to avoid sql injection),
> send it to the server and read (and even download) the response (a table).
> 
> I think the query builder doesn't support joining, but you can prepare
> virtual table in your db with presetted join and expose
> these ones to your users.
> 
> Best :)
> 
> 
> 
> 2015-05-26 9:13 GMT+02:00 Alex Salkever <alex at silk.co>:
> 
>> I second Elasticsearch. It's amazing.
>> 
>> On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 9:27 PM, Justin Seitz <justin at automatingosint.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> One thing that I have used previously is Elasticsearch and Kibana. It
>>> is a NoSQL database as well, but it allows you to hook up a "river". Rivers
>>> allow you to attach Elasticsearch to a SQL database so that you can have,
>>> for example, a Postgres database that you can query traditional SQL against
>>> but you can have a friendly full text search in the form of Elasticsearch,
>>> exposed over a nice interface like Kibana.
>>> 
>>> This seems to fit well with your use case, and I would be more than happy
>>> to help if you had questions setting it up.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> https://github.com/jprante/elasticsearch-jdbc/wiki/Step-by-step-recipe-for-setting-up-the-river-with-PostgreSQL
>>> 
>>> Justin
>>> 
>>> On 2015-05-25 10:19 PM, Alex Salkever wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'd be cautious about MongoDB. It's NoSQL and doesn't handle nested data
>>> very well. It's easy to use if you are only doing things with document
>>> format but it's not really a SQL tool.
>>> 
>>> I think the problem is the GUI part. There are loads of hosted solutions
>>> for DBs but most don't have GUIs that would allow Excel users to work with
>>> data. That's why I see a lot of people using Google Sheets - because it's
>>> an Excel flavor but does synch across users and has versioning that can
>>> easily be rolled back, as well as roles.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Michael Saunby <mike at saunby.net> <mike at saunby.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> How about using CartoDB?  It's an open source project, so you can host it
>>> yourself - https://github.com/CartoDB/cartodb
>>> but there's also free to use and enterprise services http://cartodb.com/
>>> 
>>> Files in Excel and many other formats can be imported easily.
>>> 
>>> Michael
>>> 
>>> On 17 April 2015 at 18:45, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at znmeb.net> <znmeb at znmeb.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 12:49 AM, Sam Leon <sam.leon at okfn.org> <sam.leon at okfn.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I'm looking for a secure hosted database service ideally running
>>> 
>>> Postgres in
>>> 
>>> the backend which could be queried and updated using SQL commands but
>>> 
>>> also
>>> 
>>> had a graphical interface for users not familiar with SQL who can
>>> 
>>> easily run
>>> 
>>> queries and export to CSV. It's for journalists I'm working with who
>>> 
>>> have
>>> 
>>> various datasets currently in Excel which is a nightmare for
>>> 
>>> simultaneous
>>> 
>>> work and is exceptionally brittle.
>>> 
>>> I'm aware of the the PANDA project, wondered if anyone else had any
>>> tooling/service tips?
>>> 
>>> Sam
>>> 
>>> Some combination of Excel, ODBC, PgAdmin3 and PostgreSQL is probably
>>> the easiest path out of chaos for you and your users.  A hosted
>>> PostgreSQL isn't going to be cheap, though - I'd start with free
>>> desktop installs to get the workflow stabilized.
>>> http://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/
>>> 
>>> If you do go the hosted route, you'll need to hire a strong PostgreSQL
>>> database administrator (DBA) to handle all the backup and security
>>> stuff. Don't make that a "side task" for someone or you'll either lose
>>> data or get hacked or both.
>>> 
>>> The front ends are Excel and PgAdmin3. PgAdmin3 is a GUI tool for
>>> managing the database but it also has a visual query builder similar
>>> to the one in MS Access. Excel also has a query builder. ODBC is
>>> "middleware" that will present a uniform database language to any
>>> query tool.
>>> 
>>> After you've got all that nailed down, it's just a small step to R,
>>> RStudio and the bright world of analysis and visualization described
>>> in the RStudio cheatsheets
>>> (http://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/). ;-)
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>> Unsubscribe:https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> data-driven-journalism mailing list
>>> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org
>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>> Unsubscribe:
>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> Alex Salkever
>> Growth/BD/Data Journalism
>> 415-503-9035
>> www.silk.co / @silkdotco <http://www.twitter.com/silkdotco> /
>> @silkjournalism <http://www.twitter.com/silkjournalism>
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> data-driven-journalism mailing list
>> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org
>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
> 
> 
> -- 
> ALESSIO CIMARELLI
> a.k.a. jenkin
> 
> Data scientist, web developer e giornalista scientifico free-lance
> 
> Blog: dataninja.it <http://www.dataninja.it/>
> Mail: jenkin at dataninja.it
> PGP pub key: 0x46bd7d12
> <http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE9FD2D2B>
> Twitter: @jenkin27 <https://twitter.com/jenkin27> | Skype: alessio.cimarelli
> 
> About.me <http://about.me/alessio.cimarelli>
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 11:26:29 +0100
> From: Max Harlow <maxharlow at gmail.com>
> To: "List about Data Driven Journalism and Open Data in Journalism."
>    <data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org>
> Subject: Re: [ddj] GUI database tools for newsrooms
> Message-ID:
>    <CAL=0T_XSoyUNOKwNtQjaq67Cod5zfTdGHBwZ32mAApuKU+=mvQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> Have had some success here with the Elasticsearch/Kibana combination too.
> 
> Recently we've been using Mode Analytics <http://modeanalytics.com/>. You
> can plug in most relational databases, and it gives a good interface for
> writing SQL queries, and then creating charts from the results or exporting
> a CSV. Importantly, you can also make parameterised queries and share them
> with others in your organisation, which just shows a text field, and then
> inserts the contents into a predefined query -- letting colleagues not
> familiar with SQL use a database. The tool sadly propitiatory and paid, but
> they've been nice enough to give it to us for free, as we're a nonprofit
> crediting them for stories where we use the tool -- if you're interested
> email me off-list and I can put you in contact with the person there who
> organised that for us.
> 
> 
> 
> On 28 May 2015 at 09:24, Alessio Cimarelli | Dataninja.it <
> jenkin at dataninja.it> wrote:
> 
>> Hi Sam,
>> 
>> if you want to stay in the SQL world, you can use a relational db on the
>> back-end (postgresql, but also mysql),
>> queried by a simple server-side application (for example using php
>> language).
>> 
>> The key part of this simple stack is on the front-end: you can expose to
>> your users a graphical query builder
>> to write the WHERE clause of an arbitrary sql statement simply pointing
>> and clicking: http://mistic100.github.io/jQuery-QueryBuilder/.
>> 
>> Users can build their own query (only WHERE clause, server-side validation
>> is required here to avoid sql injection),
>> send it to the server and read (and even download) the response (a table).
>> 
>> I think the query builder doesn't support joining, but you can prepare
>> virtual table in your db with presetted join and expose
>> these ones to your users.
>> 
>> Best :)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 2015-05-26 9:13 GMT+02:00 Alex Salkever <alex at silk.co>:
>> 
>>> I second Elasticsearch. It's amazing.
>>> 
>>> On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 9:27 PM, Justin Seitz <justin at automatingosint.com
>>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> One thing that I have used previously is Elasticsearch and Kibana. It
>>>> is a NoSQL database as well, but it allows you to hook up a "river". Rivers
>>>> allow you to attach Elasticsearch to a SQL database so that you can have,
>>>> for example, a Postgres database that you can query traditional SQL against
>>>> but you can have a friendly full text search in the form of Elasticsearch,
>>>> exposed over a nice interface like Kibana.
>>>> 
>>>> This seems to fit well with your use case, and I would be more than
>>>> happy to help if you had questions setting it up.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> https://github.com/jprante/elasticsearch-jdbc/wiki/Step-by-step-recipe-for-setting-up-the-river-with-PostgreSQL
>>>> 
>>>> Justin
>>>> 
>>>> On 2015-05-25 10:19 PM, Alex Salkever wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I'd be cautious about MongoDB. It's NoSQL and doesn't handle nested data
>>>> very well. It's easy to use if you are only doing things with document
>>>> format but it's not really a SQL tool.
>>>> 
>>>> I think the problem is the GUI part. There are loads of hosted solutions
>>>> for DBs but most don't have GUIs that would allow Excel users to work with
>>>> data. That's why I see a lot of people using Google Sheets - because it's
>>>> an Excel flavor but does synch across users and has versioning that can
>>>> easily be rolled back, as well as roles.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Sat, Apr 18, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Michael Saunby <mike at saunby.net> <mike at saunby.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> How about using CartoDB?  It's an open source project, so you can host it
>>>> yourself - https://github.com/CartoDB/cartodb
>>>> but there's also free to use and enterprise services http://cartodb.com/
>>>> 
>>>> Files in Excel and many other formats can be imported easily.
>>>> 
>>>> Michael
>>>> 
>>>> On 17 April 2015 at 18:45, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb at znmeb.net> <znmeb at znmeb.net> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Apr 17, 2015 at 12:49 AM, Sam Leon <sam.leon at okfn.org> <sam.leon at okfn.org> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> I'm looking for a secure hosted database service ideally running
>>>> 
>>>> Postgres in
>>>> 
>>>> the backend which could be queried and updated using SQL commands but
>>>> 
>>>> also
>>>> 
>>>> had a graphical interface for users not familiar with SQL who can
>>>> 
>>>> easily run
>>>> 
>>>> queries and export to CSV. It's for journalists I'm working with who
>>>> 
>>>> have
>>>> 
>>>> various datasets currently in Excel which is a nightmare for
>>>> 
>>>> simultaneous
>>>> 
>>>> work and is exceptionally brittle.
>>>> 
>>>> I'm aware of the the PANDA project, wondered if anyone else had any
>>>> tooling/service tips?
>>>> 
>>>> Sam
>>>> 
>>>> Some combination of Excel, ODBC, PgAdmin3 and PostgreSQL is probably
>>>> the easiest path out of chaos for you and your users.  A hosted
>>>> PostgreSQL isn't going to be cheap, though - I'd start with free
>>>> desktop installs to get the workflow stabilized.
>>>> http://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/
>>>> 
>>>> If you do go the hosted route, you'll need to hire a strong PostgreSQL
>>>> database administrator (DBA) to handle all the backup and security
>>>> stuff. Don't make that a "side task" for someone or you'll either lose
>>>> data or get hacked or both.
>>>> 
>>>> The front ends are Excel and PgAdmin3. PgAdmin3 is a GUI tool for
>>>> managing the database but it also has a visual query builder similar
>>>> to the one in MS Access. Excel also has a query builder. ODBC is
>>>> "middleware" that will present a uniform database language to any
>>>> query tool.
>>>> 
>>>> After you've got all that nailed down, it's just a small step to R,
>>>> RStudio and the bright world of analysis and visualization described
>>>> in the RStudio cheatsheets
>>>> (http://www.rstudio.com/resources/cheatsheets/). ;-)
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>>> Unsubscribe:https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> data-driven-journalism mailing listdata-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.orghttps://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> data-driven-journalism mailing list
>>>> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org
>>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>>> Unsubscribe:
>>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Alex Salkever
>>> Growth/BD/Data Journalism
>>> 415-503-9035
>>> www.silk.co / @silkdotco <http://www.twitter.com/silkdotco> /
>>> @silkjournalism <http://www.twitter.com/silkjournalism>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> data-driven-journalism mailing list
>>> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org
>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>>> Unsubscribe:
>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> ALESSIO CIMARELLI
>> a.k.a. jenkin
>> 
>> Data scientist, web developer e giornalista scientifico free-lance
>> 
>> Blog: dataninja.it <http://www.dataninja.it/>
>> Mail: jenkin at dataninja.it
>> PGP pub key: 0x46bd7d12
>> <http://keyserver.ubuntu.com/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE9FD2D2B>
>> Twitter: @jenkin27 <https://twitter.com/jenkin27> | Skype:
>> alessio.cimarelli
>> 
>> About.me <http://about.me/alessio.cimarelli>
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> data-driven-journalism mailing list
>> data-driven-journalism at lists.okfn.org
>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/data-driven-journalism
>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/data-driven-journalism
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