Data is the heart of the Workshop. All the information the Workshop collects and aggregates needs to be kept in the Workshop database in a way that is conveniently accessible and streamlined (to allow simultaneous extraction of facts from several sources). The Data Warehouse project was born in order to establish a simple information infrastructure that can be used by websites that display public information. Software developers in this field will be able to focus on the issues that characterize each site: obtaining the data, analyzing it and presenting it in the most friendly and simple way.

Development of the data warehouse includes:

  • Building a central database that will include the entire information from all sources:
    • All the data in a single database
    • Normalized data made compatible with the database so that the same fields will have a uniform format in all the different datasets (such as time, geographical coordinates, etc.)
  • Developing and hosting a generic API server that enables access to the database.
    • Includes complex inquiries that require information from several datasets simultaneously.
    • Includes support for geographic inquiries.
  • Creating tools, protocols and software libraries for easy retrieval of information.
    • RESTful API (for general use)
    • JavaScript library (for use on websites)
    • Simple web interface for presenting the information and exporting it to a variety of different formats (for end users).