Support for Non-Spatial Data
Integration of tabular data resources in GeoNode
GeoNode as a content management system for (geo)spatial data offers a discovery platform and simple GIS tools to find and access data in an interoperable way. Non-spatial data can also made available as document entities. However, the upload of structured, non-spatial data has not been supported.
In the past Thünen software development project, 52°North prototyped an extension for the GeoNode importer module to upload so called tabular data resources. Tabular data resources can be provided as a data package, a simple container format for describing a coherent collection of data in a single package. A data package consists of metadata that describes the structure and contents of the package as well as resources, such as data files, that form the contents of the package. The implementation has shown that the data package format is a flexible and easily consumable format for GeoNode. Since then, the datapackage extension has been made available through the German GeoNode user group.
As part of the German GeoNode user group, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) defined further requirements for the module and formulated special topics and features such as (non-exhaustive list)
- Tabular resources should be filterable subtypes of regular datasets
- Cleanup of information relevant only to spatial data
- Futher integratino of tabular data into existing tools, such as dataset downloads
- Aggregate multiple tables into a tabular collection
52°North implemented all of the features defined above. In addition, our team resolved open issues and limitations regarding the integration of the new resource subtype and dataset handling. These improvements will in turn be incorporated into the development of the Thünen Atlas, which is currently under development. As part of the process, 52°North based the development on the GeoNode Blueprint, resulting in a recommended procedure template for developing other GeoNode contrib modules across multiple repositories.