FAQ

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General

What is CKAN and What is it For?

CKAN is an open-source data hub or "data management system" for cataloging, publishing, sharing and finding data. Home page: http://ckan.org/

It was originally developed to power http://ckan.net/ but has is now widely used by others including several governments. For more see http://ckan.org/faq/.

How Much Does CKAN cost?

CKAN is free/open source software and is therefore free for any kind of use.

What Features Does CKAN Have?

The core of CKAN is a powerful registry / catalog system with an easy to use web interface and a powerful API for machine interaction so that tasks like registering and acquiring datasets can be automated.

That core can then be flexibly extended in many directions to become a full data hub -- for example you can add integrated storage, social tools, data quality checking, apps and ideas listings, and integration with third party tools and services.

See also: http://ckan.org/features/

Core Features

Additional Features

Who's Using CKAN

Several governments and institutions including the UK government for http://data.gov.uk/, the Helsinki Region for http://data.hri.fi/, Greater Manchester councils for http://datagm.org.uk/ and International Aid Transparency Initiative for http://iatiregistry.org/. More instances are listed on Instances.

What Can You Use CKAN for?

There are two main ways people use CKAN. The first is a place to put the data they are aware of. The second is as a place where people can find data. The resources tools and features are different for each.

If you are looking for data or services, you will find the search facility the most useful tool.

You can search by keyword, or filter by certain attributes such as whether the license is open or not. The search will return a list of matching datasets. Some datasets are of good quality and others are of unfortunately of less good quality.

If you ever find that a dataset has missing information or its links no longer work you should feel free to edit it to correct the problems or to add a comment so that someone else can correct it for you (see Q1.5). Certain datasets link to files that can be previewed from within CKAN. These are usually .csv files or .xls files and they will have a "preview" link next to the download link. Others that contain information that has a geospatial component (information related to where things are) can be displayed on a map from within CKAN.

If you are entering data there are two approaches you can take.

If you only have a few files you can use the "Add Dataset" form to enter the data manually in your web browser. If you are a developer (or can pursuade one to help you!) and you want to do a bulk import into CKAN you can either write a harvester to make whatever store your data is in interoperable with CKAN (see Q1.9) or use the CKAN API and our existing software libraries to automatically add your metadata.

In the future we hope people will also use the APIs to build web-based "mashups" directly against the JSON metadata CKAN provides via its API and the preview data it supplies. (See this blog post for examples related to data.gov.uk). We will also allow people who have a dataset distribution that is not available elsewhere on the web to host it on CKAN to make submissions easier.

What is a 'dataset' or a 'resource'?

A "Dataset" in CKAN is a catalogue record for a set of data. e.g. its title, license, description, publisher etc.

A "Resource" is a URL for a single download or data service.

Sometimes it is not clear whether several pieces of similar data are each Resources in a Dataset, or separate Datasets. There are no firm rules, but it is good to group them as Resources in one Dataset it they are a group of files/services that are useful to consider together and have similar metadata that relates to them.

For example: Several publications of crime statistics from the same publisher. You'd have one Dataset describing the publisher, collection method, precision, license. and have separate Resources for downloads for the data over different time periods or geographic regions. If more crime statistics came from a different publisher, or had different collection methods then it would constitute a separate Dataset.

Is CKAN interoperable with other data catalogues and data hubs?

Yes! CKAN has a well designed and robust harvesting interface that exposes three simple API calls so that third party catalog vendors can easily add support for their catalog.

In addition to its own API, CKAN already has harvesting interfaces that support standards such as CSW/INSPIRE for interoperability with other geospatial cataloges such as GeoNetwork. CKAN is used for the UK portal for INSPIRE compliance as part of a federated network. CKAN can both import and export INSPIRE and GEMINI 2.1 records.

More broadly it has support for importing data from a number of catalogues and sites across Europe.

I'm a non-technical user, is CKAN for me?

Yes. You can use CKAN as a non-technical user.

Where Else Can I Get Help?

If you have any questions about CKAN not answered here please post on the mailing list: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/ckan-discuss or get in touch via http://www.okfn.org/contact/

Can I Get Paid Support and Development

Yes. See http://ckan.org/support/.

How Can I Get Involved?

How can I find out about updates and new features in CKAN?

Several resources are available for keeping up-to-date with CKAN developments:


Managing Information in CKAN

See Managing Datasets

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