For WordPress's sister project BuddyPress, we are looking for relatively-reputable resources that manage a list of countries and regions. Due to the WordPress OpenSource philosophy, we are only seeking GPL-compatible resources.
If no such resources exist, we could possibly consider GPL-compatible services as well.
Or there could possibly be a GlotPress-like service (see http://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp/dev) wherein the community contributes and maintains the database which can be downloaded via a link or API.
So far all the databases/services I have found have either been commercial or otherwise incompatible with GPL.
It seems unfortunate to set off on another data collection effort when there are already volunteers world-wide contributing to the GeoNames collection that is available under a Creative Commons license. Does BuddyPress really want to get into the business of maintaining administrative area data that are always changing?
I agree GeoNames is a good resource. I would also bring up OpenStreetMap, which is under an Open Data Commons Open Database License (see http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/).
Related
I am trying to find a database with scientific papers which will allow me to:
1. Get metadata of papers by doi (including abstracts);
2. Do this stuff regularly (e.g. daily updated);
3. Ability to download whole existing database.
I know about Crossref API, however, only 3% of all publications presented have abstract (and none of biggest publishers like Springer or Elsevier provide them). On the other side I see some projects like Dimensions or Researcher which already implemented mentioned functionality. So the question is: does somebody know such services (possibly not free) and had experience working with them?
Have you looked at Semantic Scholar (https://www.semanticscholar.org/)? They have an API that supports the first of your requirements (http://api.semanticscholar.org/) and also provide the "Open Research Corpus" (http://labs.semanticscholar.org/corpus/) which should satisfy your third requirement. It is a smaller database than what is provided by Scopus or Web of Science, but both of those require subscriptions to fully use their APIs and don't (as far as I know) have a real way for you to purchase a full download of the database.
I work at an office with some colleagues generating and consuming structured data which can be normally stored in a database. For instance:
- data from several countries: capital, population, currency, ...
- forecasts of the evolution of the population in each country: each year we generate one different time series
We store these data in dozens of Excel files (which is the last version?, where are they stored?, are they in a shared directory?), and we produce lots of document from these data (power point files, other Excel files to make calculations, ...).
I know how to install a mySQL server on Linux, and I could build a web-app to generate and store data, and I could build an API to consume the data. But I wondered if there was any other smarter solution to implement a simple centralized system to store and share information at an office.
Thank you very much.
It may be better to implement a cloud service here instead of working things from scratch - just to save the time and effort. Here are two cloud service solutions with some pros and cons of their features. If anything strikes to be useful, I would recommend looking deeper into them.
Cloud Service 1
If storing and sharing of files is the key point here, using an online storage system like box.com would be a good solution. I personally like box.com better than Dropbox since it seems to have better Admin capabilities when working in teams (I may just be baiased here).
Pros:
there are version histories for uploaded files, and files can be locked so they cannot be downloaded
there are access stats (logs) for each file, so you know when someone viewed or downloaded files
there's an area for Box users to leave comments for each file that is uploaded
Excel/Word/Powerpoint files can be previewed in the browser before
downloading them (and other files as well - personally found that
preview of vector files being very useful)
directories and files are immediately accessable via mobile after uploading
shared links can be generated for each file or directory for users without Box accounts to view and download
Cons:
Users will need a Box account to upload files (even for the shared links)
Users may be more used to the Dropbox UI and may find Box to be have a different UX than expected (althoug the UI is not hard to master at all)
Cloud Service 2
If finding an SQL alternative is the key point here, using an online database platform such as kintone would be a good solution. kintone allows you to build customizable online tables (called "Apps" in kintone) using drag and drop.
Pros:
live graphs can be generated on kintone from the stored data
database tables can be created and updated really easily with just the GUI
you can define table columns (or "Fields") to store attachment files
each row (or "Record") has an area for users to leave comments
each Record has a history feature, so you know who edited what contents and when. Nothing is saved locally on your computer, so the latest data is always online (no conflicts occur)
kintone also has internal forums (or "Spaces") that can be used as an alternative for internal emails.
Apps and Spaces are instantly accessable via mobile
kintone has open REST APIs and JavaScript customization capabilities for any further UI changes or connecting with other sources
Cons:
users need a kintone account to view data or to add data into apps, although there are 3rd party solutions (at a reasonable price) that allow you to do that
it may not be as intuitive as storing data in excel spreadsheets (but that's mainly because everyone's used to excel)
Further questions about cloud services may belong better in the Software Recommendations Community https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/
I'm personally good with the kintone APIs, so if you have any further questions related to API (capabilities, limits, possibilities etc), please go ahead to post them here in stackoverflow
I am starting a political mandate next month, and I would like to store various opinions and events in a (relational?) database online.
To make things clearer, I wish I can find a ready to use tool (not too expensive or free, and preferably open source) to
Maintain a list of politicians in the area.
Maintain a list of events in our local political life
Track political themes over time
Maintain a list of opinions from politicians about those themes
Track participation of politicians to events, like local councils
Link events and opinions to media articles, pictures and/or sound
Track party subscriptions of the politicians
...
Of course, part of this information should be stored on the fly during meetings (like who is here tonight and who is not?), while other bits might be updated off site (like summaries of speeches).
Does anyone now about a solution that would fit these needs? It might be called Citizen Relationship Management, isn't it?
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Online could definitely do all of that and more. It is on demand and you can get a free one month trial here - http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/home
Dynamics CRM has been marketed as xRM for a while now for its ability to be easily customized to track any type of relationships.
Please take a look at some of my previous answers for more information on what it can do -
Any CRM platforms that have API access and an easy migration from Salesforce?
Can I use Dynamics CRM as a Shopping Website?
Requirements for archival type software
1. Data/Image/possibly video.... upload/search/retrevial/edit from web.
2. Easily implemented user defined Custom Fields
3. Easy backup.
4. Low cost ... either opensource or very low cost
I am a very novice programmer. My primary goal is to manage a collection and publish it to the web.
Options
A. Open source software such as collective access
Problems: Custom fields not supported. Continued support? Portablity of
database?
B. Use Microsoft Access and then use MVC or other development platforms to eventually
publish to the web.
Problems:Difficult to integrate to web?
C. Design my own MVC database application.
Problems:Difficult for novice programmer? Custom Fields and Upload of various data
formats difficult to implement?
Sounds like you are looking for a Digital Assets Management system. I found ResourceSpace (http://www.resourcespace.org/) and Razuna (http://www.razuna.org/) very useful for similar projects - both fall into your A category.
Requirements for archival type
software 1. Data/Image/possibly
video.... upload/search/retrevial/edit
from web. 2. Easily implemented user
defined Custom Fields 3. Easy backup.
4. Low cost ... either opensource or very low cost
Hi there,
As mentioned here before, but Razuna will satisfy your requirements quite well.
It can manage images, documents, videos and audios. It will share folderd and collections on the web with access permissions and will allow you to search among the different kind of assets as well.
Moreover, it can handle metadata of all this asset. It will not only read metadata, but also WRITE metadata, also. Furthermore, you can set the custom fields for each asset type and users will have a web interface to work with.
Razuna supports different databases (H2, MySQL, MS SQL and Oracle (soon DB2)) and let's you migrate from one db to another with ease (backup / restore option).
Best of it all: It is available under a open source license for you to deploy and enjoy today. You can get it at http://razuna.org.
Kind Regards,
Nitai
PS: I'm the main developer and founder of Razuna.
We're writing an open source tool that is designed to work against multiple database products (really, it's designed to work with any database that has a JDBC driver available). However, because it does DDL (not DML), we need to test against different products.
While MySQL, PostgreSQL and other open source db's are easy for us to test on (since we - the developers - all use these daily), testing those products is easy. But, finding different installations of other, commercial database products is a different story.
Does anyone know of a "database sandbox", or similar service that would allow us to test code against multiple database products without having to buy and install them?
Thanks in advance!
I don't know of such a service but it may well be worthwhile contacting some of commercial vendors as it is often in their interests to have interoperability with open source libraries. The other way to approach it would be to find a company that would like to use your tool with one of the commercial db's (because they are already tied to that vendor in-house) and ask them if you can get access or spend some time in their office. This is an approach I used when developing a Continuous Integration tool which needed to work with different commercial source control systems and it worked surprisingly well.
You may also want to get in touch with open source orgs like Codehaus or Apache as they have established open-source links with commercial vendors and may be able to give you access to the DBs you need.
You may want to use an ORM, such as Hibernate, or some other open-source ORM, as those will be tested on different databases, and you can then develop knowing that all you have to do is unit test the DAO, but not be so concerned about the different databases.