This system is based on Data Packages, a simple but flexible protocol for storing dataset.
It was created and supported by Frictionless Data, an open-data collaboration/initiative developing and maintaning open source tools for data curation and distribution.
Data packages ars based on the simple combination of tabular text files (CSV/TSV) to store data, and a JSON file (datapackage.json
) storing metadata of the datasets and the tables' fields.
The simplicity of the concept makes it very flexible and easy to integrate with existing data distribution portals and technologies.
A tutorial illustrating the process of producing and distributing a Data Package can be found here. Any editor able to open text files can be used to work on data packages. A web-based interface, the Data Package Creator, can be used to quickly and intuitively create, modify, or export data packages.