That’s OK. I have until either 11:00 or 12:00. I don’t know what’s your next...?
Yes. The NDC already is working on automatic checks for simple things like this...
Wow, this is bad data for sure.
403 ?
Exactly. That would be perfect. You could use collaborative spreadsheets.
Right. This is the webkey. You can grant others read‑only access to this metadata table, or write‑only access if you have set this up. What I’m saying is, back to this original drawing, if you maintain DDL in Data Package or in other description format in spreadsheets...
But all this is manual. As we see in Blue Buttons and other any manual steps, many people would overlook its existence. Not many people would know how to use it. Even if they can bulk download everything.
If you do a bulk download, it basically packages everything written, because that application services are mounted read‑only. By definition, any file that’s writable would be specific to this instance. So it’s data portability. If you click this arrow and you migrate somewhere else, then you automagically get data portability.
What we are doing here is essentially saying that any metadata maintenance, which is often collaborative, you can not only share access to internal stakeholders, but because it is capacity‑based architecture, you can also do a bulk download.
What we are saying ‑‑ and we are getting far more technical than usual, but I think it’s important ‑‑ is that the spreadsheet that we use internally, and inside our institutional platform, is EnterCalc. I happen to be the maintainer, so I can get whatever features in.
What we paid him to develop, which was just finished now, is a way for a grain ‑‑ which is the technical term for a microcontainer, a single‑document container running in Sandstorm ‑‑ to serve an HTTP proxy so that if it wants OpenID login or a process that feeds ...
Right. It’s Kenton’s work. We actually commissioned Kenton to build what they call a powerbox, an intent‑based, open‑format‑based exchange between the Sandstorm‑hosted apps, and also with the external world.
Well, you already know Sandstorm.
It’s easier than XML.
So you’re proposing to establish a standard operation procedure for ALTER TABLEs.
...the DDLs.
Yeah, open also works for software here. (開源軟體 for "open-source software")
By the way, we don’t have the "free software" ambiguity in Chinese. (自由 is "freedom"; 免費 is "gratis".)
We have two words for this. So when we say 開放API, it implies an open format with an open license. For a "clean" format we would probably say 結構化. Maybe that’s...
In Taiwan, we have two words. We have 公開, which is the freedom of information access, which is read only, and we say 開放, which means it permits derived work.
That requires zero line of source code changes.
Now, it goes here. Because the DDL is an exact mirror of this, the proxy can just reconfigure their upstream sources here.
What we’re saying is that because this is frozen, we can take the DDL of here, and then we say, this, the DDL, it’s now the canonical metadata.
Of course.
Then the checkbox, what I mentioned before, can be checked. Then, we take this, and then make an open data repository out of the now‑frozen part of this. Then this switches to this scenario, where it’s not depenent on the original data store anymore
By the second year of this integration running, we expect that the revision here will be relatively solidified. Then, once it does that, we basically take a snapshot saying, "OK, now we know these views are free of privacy issues, FOIA‑compatible."
Then, when we say this, what we’re also saying is that this, because it’s well‑structured ‑‑ it’s got a JSON schema, whatever ‑‑ we encouraged them to run a API proxy here. So that it can do a lot of extraction and transformation...
In this scenario, which is, they have a well‑defined whatever, API, to connect to one government database to another government service, which then talks to people. This makes it a round‑trip whatever.
I do completely agree. If I may just recap a little bit. First, we don’t call this scenario open API. We stop calling this open API. We say, this is a government, for example this person may very well be another government. Let’s call this another ministry.
That’s exactly right. I agree with the whole argument.
The data’s still there.
Yeah?
Which one in the picture?
By ID, by user, whatever, right?
That’s because of the disk cost. It’s now essentially zero, compared to the bandwidth.
That’s my favorite style.
But what you store on S3, may also be either individual records, or even the granularity itself...
Over individual, granular, APIs.
[laughs]
On this I have something to say, but please continue.
It’s called the "API economy." Go ahead.
What you’re saying is that API has his cultural connotation of "Freemium" in it.
That’s right.
That’s just fine. Which is why I ask, if I can switch to say "open formats."
Agreed. It’s the same format basically for any...
You mean, creating new APIs. OK. But S3 is a very uniform API.
Well, if it’s machine-written, is it still expensive?
What you’re saying is that, if we say import and export, which means bulk, essentially, what’s the term for that? It’s not portable data, because "portable data" are more like My Data, it only means personal.
It’s a trend.
That is the trend.