(2010-01-29) Udell Odata For Collaborative Sensemaking

Jon Udell: OData for collaborative sense-making. The other day, Pablo Castro wrote an excellent post explaining how developers can implement aspects of the modular OData spec, and outlining some benefits that accrue from each. One of the aspects is query,

One benefit for exposing query to developers, Pablo says, is: Developers using the Data Services client for .NET would be able to use LINQ against your service...

I’d like to suggest that there’s a huge benefit for users as well. Consider Pablo’s example, based on some Washington, DC datasets published using the Open Government Data Initiative toolkit

PowerPivot adds heavy-duty business analytics to MS-Excel in ways I’m not really qualified to discuss, but for my purposes here that’s beside the point. I’m just using it to show what it can be like, from a user’s perspective, to point an OData-aware client, which could be any desktop or web application, at an OData source

it has another kind of name, one that’s independent of the user who makes such a view, and of the application used to make it. Here is that other name: <http://ogdi.cloudapp.net/v1/dc/BankLocations?$filter=name eq ‘WashingtonFirst Bank’>

If we incorporate this kind of fully articulated web namespace into public online discourse, then others can engage with it too.

When public datasets provide fully articulated web namespaces, though, things can happen in a more loosely coupled way. I can post my feedback anywhere — for example, right here on this blog. If I have something to say about the WashingtonFirst branch at 1500 K Street, NW, I can refer to it using an URL: 1500 K Street, NW.

That URL is, in effect, a trackback that points to one record in the dataset.1

Discourse about the dataset can grow online in a decentralized way.