Dear open data enthusiast,

It’s been a while since our last blog post, but not because we’ve been standing still. To the contrary, we have been busy working, building and thinking about how The DataTank can be a platform that not only publishes data into several data formats, but also a platform that can enrich data with ontologies, visualise data, and how all those different features can be loosely coupled.

The result can be seen in our repository which holds a set of packages that provide the different features a DataTank can provide. By doing this, we allow the user to have its own configuration that fits its needs, and allow other PHP developers to use our tools to perform certain functionality, which is not necessarily Open Data related. For the people who are used to our old repository, or for people who haven’t played with our code just yet, a small introduction is in place. Our The DataTank goal is simple: providing a tool that allows to publish data on the web. However, there are multiple ways of doing that. Reading data from data sources, and formatting them into a certain format for example are two different features, enriching them with ontologies is another one. Therefore, we have split those features in packages. Each package has its own goals and purpose and can contribute to publishing data in its own way. If you have no clue where to start, check out this repository.

Data processing, the early days.

In a previous blogpost we have mentioned that we were going to work on projects with Westtoer, and the Flemish Government. The Westtoer project has almost come to an end now, and it is time for us to focus on the next big thing: opening Flanders! Therefore, we are currently working on some final enhancements and issues and we should be finished by the end of May in a stable release. After that we will gather all of our long-term visions and ideas and pour them into a roadmap, aligned with the needs of the Flemish government, so stay tuned.

Dear open data enthusiasts,

It has been a while since you have heard from us, however, some open software analysis tools have noticed something was stirring with The DataTank repository!

The DataTank commits of the past month.

Since the last few weeks of 2012 and the first of 2013 a lot of work has been done to The DataTank project. Why is this? Let’s say The DataTank has had a great start of 2013.

We are very proud to announce that The DataTank is going to be used in a number of open data projects this year. These projects will allow the further development of The DataTank software and integration with semantic web technologies.

A first project where The DataTank software is being used is a project funded by Westtoer. This project will create a data hub for data sources, such as weather information and touristic routes. The novelty of this project enables the introduction of large data sources and enables lifting the data to the 5th star of linked open data, a promise we have made since the beginning of The DataTank. With this project we have had the unique opportunity to fully revision our architecture and came up with a more modular and professional approach than before.

This project is realized by combined forces of We Open Data, a working group of OKFN Belgium,  iMinds, and Wunderkraut Belgium. The beauty of this project is that the entire solution has to be open source and must provide structure so that 3rd parties can use it as well. The requirements and deliverables have been made by Marc Portier. Marc has a great vision on open data and made it so that every piece of the Westtoer project is completely open source, ready for other open data projects and enthusiasts to use. This will hopefully snowball the rate of adoption of the developed framework and will allow us to create a stable community around it.

Next to this great project, we received some other good news. Minister of innovation Ingrid Lieten shows her support to create an open data platform for Flanders. iMinds has the lead of this project and will use The DataTank as part of its open data platform solution.

These two projects allow The DataTank to be developed in an environment where academic requirements meets business requirements and become more aligned with its core purpose, namely opening data through an open software solution.

For further information please visit our new DataTank repository. Our previous repository, containing both version 1.0 and 2.0, will be supported until the summer, but we will help everyone updating their current instance to a new one. We have worked hard to make sure there is backward compatibility and you can export and import your configuration.

To conclude this post we would like to thank digipolis, the city of Ghent, the city of Antwerp and iRail (our open transport working group) for using our software in pioneering open data projects such as open data gent, open data antwerpen and data.iRail.be. These pioneer projects provide incentives for students and businesses to use open data and transform that data into information and knowledge. Furthermore, they have provided the first steps towards a community that builds further on The DataTank software outside of the We Open Data working group.

- Jan Vansteenlandt