Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

February 18, 2011

DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language

DSPL: Dataset Publishing Language

From the website:

DSPL is the Dataset Publishing Language, a representation language for the data and metadata of datasets. Datasets described in this format can be processed by Google and visualized in the Google Public Data Explorer.

Features:

  • Use existing data: Just add an XML metadata file to your existing CSV data files
  • Powerful visualizations: Unleash the full capabilities of the Google Public Data Explorer, including the animated bar chart, motion chart, and map visualization
  • Linkable concepts: Link to concepts in other datasets or create your own that others can use
  • Multi-language: Create datasets with metadata in any combination of languages
  • Geo-enabled: Make your data mappable by adding latitude and longitude data to your concept definitions. For even easier mapping, link to Google’s canonical geographic concepts.
  • Fully open: Freely use the DSPL format in your own applications

For the details:

A couple quick observations:

Geared towards data that can be captured in csv files, which are considerable and interesting data sets, but only a slice of all data.

Did not appear on a quick scan of the tutorial or developer guide to provide a way to specify properties for topics.

Did not appear to provide a way to specify when (or why) topic could be merged with one another.

Plus marks for enabling navigation by topics, but that is like complimenting a nautical map for having the compass directions isn’t it?

I think this could be a very good tool for investigating data or even showing, but if you had a topic map, sort of illustrations to clients.

Moving up in the stack, both virtual as well as actual, of reading materials on my desk.

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