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Simple data protocols (and pointers to existing ones) for doing collaborative, distributed development of data.

Things like:

  • Protocols for sharing and syncing data changes and sync protocol
  • Protocols for diffing and merging data
  • Web-oriented query languages for data

Data Wranglers and Scientists of the World Unite

We, data wranglers and data scientists of the world, will attempt to agree on common open protocols for activities such as:

  • Remotely syncing databases
  • Performing SQL-like queries over HTTP
  • Publishing and acquiring data

The intention is to use these to improve the user experience for people who use web-based data processing and analytics software from different vendors together.

For example, the datastore in an open Government data directory would be directly queryable by a chart visualisation GUI, and the datastore in a web-based screen scraper would be directly accessible to sync to the datastore of a power refining GUI.

We will register these protocols as official standards somewhere, perhaps as RFCs or with W3C, or as part of some other standards effort.

We will get support from key existing players such as open source database projects and the creators of data analytics software our communities actively use.

We will join with existing similar efforts wherever possible.