Large amounts of data are produced each second; the challenge that many organizations face is how to provide quick and easy access to this data while ensuring the data is in a safe and flexible format. The web is a convenient way to distribute data. SODA attempts to make that job easier by providing a tool which sits between a distributed databases and the Internet, producing a generic query interface to these datasources. Additionally, it manages the metadata, and uses global parameters to represent the data (called primitives) to semantically identify what is being stored. It can produce output to the screen for viewing, or create a flat file that can be downloaded and easily imported into your favorite statistical package. It provides a template-based datafile upload mechanism so repositories are easy to maintain as new data is collected.
This is the project website for SODA, Semantic Online Data Access. SODA is a web software component (version 0.4 currently being rewritten using the CakePHP framework), that manages datasets. One can store and retrieve data and metadata in an online fashion, control the visibility of resources to the world and groups, distribute data as necessity dictates, and provide unified definitions (a controlled vocabulary) for data the data cataloged. This site contains documentation, links to download this component (todo), SODA API reference, and links to other sodanet websites.
A goal is to promote standards for scientific data access, ensuring that data is cataloged in a consistent manner, and by doing so, exposing the metadata to other services and tools to utilize the data stored. It provides a "generic" query interface for selecting parameters and collection locations, providing the raw data in a delimited file (.csv). There is a management interface for metadata upkeep and dataset interactions. This modules was written in PHP, and is designed to be run in conjunction with a CMS, a Content Management System (this site is running Drupal).
Why "Semantic"?
Fri, 03/09/2007 - 21:32 — dwaetjenThe word 'semantic' is charged with meaning, no pun intended. This weblog will attempt to discern its meaning in relation to this project, and describe some of the implications. Yes, it is a buzz word that people use in a wide variety of contexts, and SODA likely adds to this feeling of word-overuse and overall confusion. But in the end, it is just a word, and we feel this word does capture the spirit of this project, and have decided to use it!
Through SODA's ontology, we are providing a standardized way of representing datasets. SODA ontology has a direct translation to the online data that his holds, so a system should be able to process this ontology and be able to query from that data source, through SODA. The encoding of these data sources, using it's metadata, also provides the semantic seach tools, like Swoogle, to search for these online datasets with greater accuracy.
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