[DDI-SRG] FW: DDI Webservices

[Jeremy Iverson]

This came up at the best practices meeting in the Registries group. It is
true that DDI currently says nothing about how web services are implemented
or what methods they should have. I don't think that's so much a
documentation bug as something that's out of scope for the current standard.


The "DDI as Content for Registries" paper provides a very high level
framework for how such services should look, but it's not so specific as to
approach a standard. I think Arofan suggested the possibility of a working
group to develop such a standard, though.

Best,
Jeremy




From: ddi-srg-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu
[mailto:ddi-srg-bounces at icpsr.umich.edu] On Behalf Of Miller, Kenneth P
Sent: Friday, March 06, 2009 5:57 AM
To: TIC list
Subject: [DDI-SRG] FW: DDI Webservices

Hi

See full email below.
" SDMX has guidelines to do with what Methods need to be supplied on web
services, the parameters to use and the data formats, but in my
investigation of DDI I can’t find any information like this for DDI."
Is this a documentaion bug or is there stuff and he just can't find it.

best regards Ken

UK Data Archive - a service provider for the Economic and Social Data
Service (ESDS). 
Addr: University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK. Web:
<http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/>
Ken Miller - Associate Director - Head of Information Development,
Programming and e-Social Science - Tel: + 44 1206 872146
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From: Rob Dymond [mailto:Rob.Dymond at manchester.ac.uk] 
Sent: 06 March 2009 09:35
To: Corti, Louise
Subject: DDI Webservices

Hello
I found your email address, as you are listed as the contact for the
Qualitative Data Exchange Working Group for DDI, I am wondering if you maybe
able to help me. I am working on a project which aims to explore the
feasibility and potential of exploiting metadata to make aggregate outputs
from UK censuses more understandable, explorable, accessible, and therefore
more usable to the academic and wider community. To achieve these aims I
have been using DDI 3.0 and SDMX, where DDI will provide the depth of
knowledge and SDMX will be used as a the transport mechanism for the data.
SDMX has guidelines to do with what Methods need to be supplied on web
services, the parameters to use and the data formats, but in my
investigation of DDI I can’t find any information like this for DDI.
I need to build a web service that can be used exchange DDI data, be used to
pull out bits of the DDI which can be used to populate data explorations
tools that will help people to find the information they need, such as
finding out what questions were asked on the Census pertaining to Age and
then being able to pull up the variables and the data resulting from that
question, or to be able to do the opposite. 
So I am wondering if your working group has anything that could help me,
even if it’s in draft form.
I am part of a working group that is looking at how the 2011 census could be
disseminated, we would like to use DDI as part of the dissemination, but the
lack of guidance on how to use DDI in terms of Web services is likely to put
of the developers at the ONS, they are leaning towards SDMX, but at the
moment SDMX doesn’t seem to have a nice way to handle the UK Geography
hierarchy, so I’d like to be able to show them that DDI could be used as it
knows about geography. 


Rob Dymond
Census Dissemination Unit
Mimas
University of Manchester