SDS is a simple protocol/standard/specification for describing datasets. It should be pubished alongside datasets so taht consumers of the datasets (both human and machines) can understand the metadata of the dataset in a standard way.
This is just an idea at the moment. We want to create a community around this idea and help make it a real standard.
Email: ??
Datasets are any structured, non-API sources of data. For example:
- CSV file
- JSON feed
- RSS feed
- XML document
- Shapefile
- ??
This needs more definition. It is difficult to determine where an API begins and a data feed ends. This could be helpful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_set
The following is an (brainstorming) example of an SDS feed in JSON for a CSV file.
{
"sds_version": "0.1",
"set_name": "Our Example Set",
"set_description": "Our Example Set is pretty great.",
"datasets": [
{
"type": "csv",
"url": "http://example.com/datasets/data.csv",
"name": "CSV File",
"description": "CSV is still useful and simple.",
"author": "Author"
"origin": {
"author": "Example Original Author",
"organization": "Example Org",
"url": "http://example.gov/dept/data-service/"
},
"fields": {
"field_1": "Description of field 1",
"field_2": "Description of field 2",
"field_3": "Description of field 3",
"field_4": "Description of field 4"
},
"type_info": {
"version": "CVS version X",
"delimiter": ",",
"line_separator": "\r\n"
}
}
]
}