[PLUG] REMINDER: March PLUG Meeting

Michael Dexter dexter at ambidexter.com
Tue Feb 28 19:33:41 UTC 2012


                             MEETING ANNOUNCEMENT

                        The Portland Linux/Unix Group
                                  will meet
                          7 PM Thursday Mar 1, 2012
                                      at
                          Portland State University
                                    in the
                               Fariborz Maseeh
              College of Engineering & Computer Science Building
                               Room FAB 86-01
                        (This is in the basement.)
           The building is on SW 4th across from SW College Street.
        See location H-10 on map at http://pdxLinux.org/campus_map.jpg

     *******************************************************************

                                 PRESENTATION

                        Open Data and Interoperability

                                      by

                                 Arlo Belshee


Lots of us want to expose our data via RESTful web APIs. We also want to 
consume data exposed via such APIs. REST + Json works well for this. 
However, we'd also like to mash up multiple data sources and build 
higher level tools. For example, it would be nice to create Business 
Intelligence (BI) tools that can point to any API and start charting the 
data, or create JavaScript control libraries that can be bound directly 
to data sources.

Unfortunately, that isn't possible with just REST + Json.

The problem is that each service is custom. No two services follow 
exactly the same rules. Sure, everything exposes sets of resources. But 
how do you get from a resource to its related resources? How do you ask 
the server to tell you about related resources? What, exactly should the 
server do when it gets a PATCH verb? Each server interprets these 
differently, which prevents making general tools.

I'm going to talk about the OData protocol. This is an open standard 
that defines uniform semantics and modeling for RESTful web services. 
I'll show how this allows general tools to be built, and data from 
multiple sources to be combined together in interesting ways - without 
requiring custom code for each server. I'll also show how this enables 
people working in different languages. A single library can be written 
for each language which can then support all OData-compliant RESTful web 
services.

Most of the examples will be with open source frameworks and tools, but 
I'll also show ways that you can use OData to break out data that is 
trapped in closed-source systems and expose it to the open source ecosystem.

     *******************************************************************

         Agenda:

             7:00 - 7:30  Business
                  We will discuss the status of our ongoing projects
                  including PLUG's monthly Advanced Topics meetings,
                  PLUG's monthly hands on clinics etc.

             7:30 - 8:30  Presentation and Questions

                  See above

             9:00 - ...  Beer
                         The Lucky Lab Northwest Beer Hall
                         1945 NW Quimby
                         Portland, Oregon


Michael Dexter
Volunteer



More information about the PLUG mailing list