[data-protocols] Simple Data Format: straw man

Tue May 15 09:52:34 BST 2012

Hi,

Substantially inspired by Google's Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL),
I've put together a specification for a "Simple Data Format":

<http://www.dataprotocols.org/en/latest/simple-data-format.html>

Feedback and comments very welcome. Some further background info below.

Regards,

Rufus

## Purpose

The format’s focus is on simplicity and web usage – that is, usage
online with access and transmission over HTTP. In addition the format
is focused on data that can be presented in a tabular structure and in
making it easy to produce (and consume) this format from spreadsheets
and relational databases.

Main difference from DSPL:

This specification owes a great deal to the excellent Dataset
Publishing Language (DSPL) put forward by Google. The main difference
is in using JSON instead of XML for the schema and re-using as far as
possible the JSON-LD schema language (based on linked-data) rather
than inventing a new type and schema structure.

## Motivating examples

Collection of time series, e.g. YourTopia dataset
:http://datahub.io/dataset/yourtopia-italy

OpenSpending data format: http://wiki.openspending.org/Data_Format