Open source, open standards, open data - we’re using them all with the National Broadband Map. This isn’t out of an idealogical view point, it’s just that these tools are helping us achieve what we want to.
Open Data
The openness of the data is one area that we have already had an interest in for demand aggregation and other purposes. We are visualising the data using Google maps but this isn’t the only way the data can be used. We have a database API (application programming interface) which means that data can be extracted and written to the database outside of the mapping tool. It’s a permissions based so different users of the API will have different levels of access and we won’t be exposing personally identifiable data (we have to take the Privacy Act into account).
If a user of the database API wishes to access the data they have a couple of ways of doing it, one way is via the RESTful API where a carefully constructed URL will return the required data in the requested format (currently XML, XAL and KML), or they can use the SOAP API which is similar but different. There are fans of RESTful interfaces and fans of SOAP interfaces and some programming languages are better suited to one than the other.
Providing data access and tools to access the data will allow the innovative out there to find other and better ways of analysing and visualising the data.
Open Standards
We’re using open standards in the way we express our data. This means interoperability between systems, government agencies or organisations will be greater. You will know the data comes back in a format that is common and familiar to the application using it. We are working with plain old XML and structured XML such as XAL, a common standard for formatting addresses and KML the format used in Google Earth.
Open Source
The project is open source and by that we don’t mean it’s built on top of open source technologies (although it is), we mean that all code we develop is released as open source software. This means anybody can take what we have done and use the code to build their own applications. It also means people are free to build on and improve the code we have developed.
All code is released under the BSD license , a reasonably permissive open source license. In fact, Apple used BSD-licensed software to build OSX, their current operating system.
The project has been dependent on a number of open source technologies, from the servers running Linux, PHP and MySQL to the content management system which is an open source application in itself. We’re dependent on open source and are also creating open source. Goodness begets goodness.
We’ll link to the repositories of the source code as we develop the website around the application.
3 Comments
Great, I’ll be following this one. Could you email me when the code is released? I’d be keen to see how it all hangs together.
Sure thing Matthew. At present we are planning to release it as we get some content around the map so as we can communicate what the repositories actually are.
We’ll let you know as we open up the repositories. We will be communicating this within the website surrounding the mapping application and we’d like to get some context around what it is and how to use it.
We will have a wide audience and for the majority stumbling across svn://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx will be confusing, we’d like to include the links within the website but also explain what the repositories are and how they can be used.
Currently we’re in the IA and design phase for the website so we should see some more structure as we go into private and public beta.