An Introduction to DKAN Open Data Platform

1. DKAN
Fawad Abbasi
Research Student
Applied Machine Learning Academy(https://ama-academy.eu/)
abbasi@stud.uni-hannover.de

2. Open Data Platform
Open data is the idea that some data
should be freely available to everyone to
use and republish as they wish, without
restrictions from copyright, patents or
other mechanisms of control.

3. 2009 Data.gov
Data.gov aims to improve public
access to high value, machine
readable datasets generated by the
Executive Branch of the Federal
Government

4. Why Open-Source Matters...
• No vendor lock-In / choice of consultants / ability to
build in-house capacity.
• Follow open formats and standards (e.g.: DCAT, RDFa,
OData, JSON vs Shapefiles, PDF, etc.)
• Freedom of Hosting Options

5. Open Data Portal Market Leaders

6. Why DKAN Instead of Drupal+CKAN?
• Manage content, data, permissions through same platform
• Single software stack to maintain
• Single site to design & theme
• Easy to extend with social features
• Transparent, well-governed upgrade path of Drupal
• Extensive Drupal ecosystem of civil service talent, consultants,
hosting, support

7. Dkan

8. Open Data is Just “Sharing Your Files”
• Datasets are collections of resources, with some descriptive metadata
• Resources are just files. They can be any kind of file, but often they are CSV files,
spreadsheets or some other kind of tabular data file.
• Organizations create datasets and upload resources.
• Data consumers can browse datasets and sometimes see visualizations of resources.

9. DKAN
• Fully functional data portal housing datasets, Solr search, accessible via
JSON and RDF; csv or xml files uploaded through Drupal, stored in *SQL,
visualized through Recline.js
• Seeks to replicate CKAN 2.0 functionality, design, standards, & API
• Reuses CKAN components wherever possible (e.g.: Recline.js)
• Built with support and input from the Open
Knowledge Foundation
• Fully open project, with code on Drupal.org
project/DKAN

10. Features

11. DKAN Components
DKAN Distribution
DKAN Dataset module DKAN Data store module

12. DKAN Walk through

13. DKAN Walk through

14. DKAN Walk through

15. DKAN Walk through

16. DKAN Walk through
Can preview data that contains either coordinates or GeoJSON on a Leaflet.js based map:

17. DKAN Walk through
If enabled, visitors can chose one column of your data as an X-axis, one or more as Y-axis
data, and preview your data as a bar, point or line graph.

18. Ongoing Development
• Adding feedback on datasets,
other social features
• Support for additional file types
• Adding DKAN_DataSet and
DKAN_DataStore modules to other
Distros like OpenCivic
• Offering enterprise support and
hosted OpenSaaS DKAN

19. “NuData DKAN” OpenSaaS Offering
• NuData=our DKAN as a turnkey hosted 24/7 supported software‐as‐a‐service
• OpenSaaS=the best of both worlds; SaaS but truly open-‐you can take your append
your data with you with minimal switching cost
• Drupal is exceptionally well positioned to enable Open SaaS businesses

20. Follow-up
Project Page: http://drupal.org/project/DKAN
DKAN .js libraries: https://github.com/nuams/dkan
Marketing Site: http://nucivic.com/dkan/
Applied Machine Learning Academy (L3s LU Hannover)