Following the recent issues and events effecting pilot implementations of UK Government Linked Data I thought it would be helpful to provide an update on behalf of the UK Government Linked Data Working Group - Quick Start Team which had their first meeting on Monday.
Firstly, a server problem disrupted access to the source dumps of several of the Linked Data datasets and to the Linked Data API font end pages for datasets like http://education.data.gov.uk and http://transport.data.gov.uk.
Secondly, Talis Systems Ltd, who host several of the data.gov.uk Linked Data assets have announced the imminent closure of their hosting service.
Work is underway to reinstate these services. We are transferring the datasets and the associated API front ends to using an open source software stack running on commodity cloud infrastructure.
The open source stack is based on Apache Jena, using Jena TDB as the underlying triple store and Elda the Epimorphics implementation of the Linked Data API, to provide the front end APIs and Linked Data browsing.
It will take a little while for the new systems to be up a running so there will be a small break in service, for which we apologise in advance.
This does not affect http://environment.data.gov.uk, http://location.data.gov.uk http://legislation.data.gov.uk or other public sector Linked Data endpoints that are not sub-domains of data.gov.uk.
The reinstated service will include the Linked Data releases for COINS, Edubase, Reference, Transport and Crime.
At this point our aim is simply to get these data sets back up with a minimum of disruption. Once that's done we hope to prioritise refreshing of some of the key datasets. If there's Linked Data resources you need or resources you already use that are going stale then us know.
The UK Government Linked Data Working Group – Quick Start Team http://www.twitter.com/UKGovLD
3 comments
Comment by Anonymous posted on
Thanks very much for this update. As a relative newcomer to the world of governmental linked data, I found it quite disconcerting when several things stopped working the way I had just started to get used to- I'm glad that a fix is underway as it is all really, really useful stuff.
Comment by Anonymous posted on
Understand the issues, but can you give expected/target dates for reinstatement?
Comment by Jacobt posted on
Hey the article is wonderful… great write-up… I enjoyed reading all info that you have out in this article...