Announcing CKAN 1.7

The results of a lot of hard work from the CKAN team saw the light last week when CKAN version 1.7 was released. We're excited about some of the changes, and it seems that some other people are too. Some highlights are mentioned below; the complete change list is here.

New ways to handle data

A major change is the improved DataStore, which was covered in this blog post, and related improvements to the data viewer, including a completely new map view: The crucial innovation making this possible is the data API, which also introduces the possibility of automated tools for handling data, including querying and updating data without having to download and upload potentially large data files.

For data publishers: Organizations and analytics

Another significant area is the new Organization configuration for CKAN groups. When this is enabled, groups include both datasets and users, and can be used to control access permissions in a smoother way, so that, for example, a new user added to a group automatically has permission to edit the group's datasets. This will significantly ease the workflow of collaborative projects hosted on a CKAN instance, or where a datahub is used by different publishing organisations. CKAN 1.7 also includes new analytics to help gauge levels of interest and activity by keeping count of views and dowloads.

For data users: Change feeds and related items

Atom feeds let a user follow updates on datasets, groups, or other search terms that they are interested in. If you have a browser that handles Atom (such as Firefox) or another feed reader, you can see an example here. The Related Items extension gives a convenient way to link a dataset to other things - for example, a news article about it, an app that uses it, or a neat visualisation of the data.

Trying it out

CKAN 1.7 is live on the DataHub. To download and install your own copy, see the installation guide.