[wdmmg-dev] Modelling data for OpenSpending

[Friedrich Lindenberg]

Hi,

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 3:59 PM, Martin Keegan <martin.keegan at okfn.org> wrote:
> The proposed new web UI (by Nick Stenning) is at:
> http://nickstenning.github.com/openspending.modeleditor/
>
> Ideally, it would be useful to be able to:
>
> * edit the model iteratively (rather than generate-once)
> * share models between datasets (many datasets will have identical models,
> though maybe they shouldn't be separate datasets)
> * have UI for generating views etc, such that datawranglers get good
> visualisations out of the box
>
> Any thoughts, comments?

I absolutely love the new UI that Nick has written and think we should
make it a part of openspending.etl fairly soon. While there is an
option to just run it without a backend permanently, I think adding a
backend could be very useful. This would store the model data, manage
associations between either CSV references or CKAN ResourceIDs and
allow sharing (and therefore, in the future, possibly versioning) of
the model.

I'm not entirely sure how to do that, though. One option is CKAN -
which, given CORS, could even speak directly to the frontend. The
advantage here is also that we do have JS client lib for CKAN. Another
option is adding a DB backend to OS/ETL with the advantage that we can
have nice model URLs, and develop a more custom process.

Either way: this is really good & helpful.

- Friedrich

ps. GitHub just integrated this nice JS editor, Ace. If that supports
JSON - why not make Ace "advanced mode" in the model editor?