A new border for electronic data dissemination 2.0
Posted by admin | Posted in Data Sharing | Posted on 15-10-2009-05-2008
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We have already talked about new opportunities for electronic data dissemination of official statistics. In a previous article entitled “A new border for electronic data dissemination” (available only in italian) we talked about API and Web Services, showing also how was possible to build-up a Mash-up application. As example we considered a Mash-Up between ISTAT‘s (The Italian Institute of Statistics) official data on resident population coming form demo.istat.it through the use of two public Web Services and Maps obtained using the Google Maps API. In this article we are going to talk rather about Widgets.
This is a Flash Object. To see it you need a related plug-in installed on your Browser. The Chart shows us the net migration in the year 2008 for the municipality of Rome – Italy. If someone of you would like to insert that chart on your own web site or blog, then you can use the following code.
The result of copying and pasting the code into a web page is to embed the chart into the page. It’s exactely the same behaviour we have when we use the “embedding code” closed every movie on Youtube to share it on our own site or a Social Network. An interesting feature to underline is that no copies of the chart are made. The chart always remains on the original server. Every time the chart will be displayed on any web page, it will be downloaded from that server. The advantage is a centralized management of the widget. If for instance you change the chart content adding a new data or you wish to modify the colours or the layout, all new changes will be displayed on the same time on all sites and blogs that embedded the chart using the code shown before. It creates a direct “channel” between the data producer and the data consumer. When new data will be released by the Italian Institute of Statistics, all web pages containing the embedded widget will show automatically the updated data, all at the same time and without middlemen. In fact all data displayed on the chart come directely from demo.istat.it, although the Widget is stored physically on my personal web site. In the previous example I used the XML/SWF Charts at www.maani.us, but we can buil-up all charts we need, also charts more specific for statistical data visualization.
Not only charts but also tables. In this case we used data coming from the Web Service oat demo.istat.it with the Google Visualization API. It’s a small Mash-up that you can embed on your web page using the following code.
Or using the following Javascript
The code 058091 corresponds with the municipality of Rome. You can change it with the code you prefer. You can use the official Istat’s Municipalities Code List or more simply you can use the following application that returns the code of each italian municipality, the code of the related province and the code of the region for the year 2008. So if you wish to display data about an italian province, you can use on the widget only the three digit code (ie 058) while you can use the two digit code to display the regional net migration.
The World Wide Web seems to be born for sharing data and information. And sharing statistical data embedding it in web sites, blogs and social networks in a really simple way, without middemen and with the possibility to update it outright on all sites that sharing the widget is a big opportunity. Certainly a new border in the statistical electronic dissemination.
