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What is the best way for a website to format data to the public? I already have my presentation, but I can also provide it as a .xls, .csv, sql, or html table.

What is the best way for a website to format data to the public? I already have my presentation, but I can also provide it as a .xls, .csv, sql, or html table. What would be best to help programmers/data scientists use my data?

polkapolka 8y ago
Csv and a permitive license like CC0. Provide good meta data to make provenance easier. Mark up your dataset with schema.org.
combatentropy 8y ago
I vote CSV. - simple - lightweight - open It's easy for the consumer of your data to convert a CSV to whatever format they need. - spreadsheet, for personal analysis - SQL database, for industrial-strength analysis - HTML, for pretty output to their users
- lolive 8y ago
  Oh, and don't forget that CSV is a rigorous data format, with many tricks. Don't just append some text together, separated by commas, and call it CSV. Instead, use a dedicated lib to create the CSV for you.
heinrichhartman 8y ago
1) Put it on figshare or github. Your website might be dead next year. Those services have a better chance of survival. 2) CSV, JSON works fine if your dataset is just a few numbers and strings. GitHub will preview csv files as HTML tables. 3) If you need the efficiency of binary data and more robust data containers I would look into - Parquet https://parquet.apache.org/documentation/latest/ https://parquet.apache.org/documentation/latest/ and - Arvo http://avro.apache.org/ http://avro.apache.org/ http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2009/11/avro-a-new-format-for-data-interchange/ http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2009/11/avro-a-new-format-for-... 4) DataScientists work with R/Pandas "DataFrames". If you are familiar with either one, import the data into a data frame and use an export method to do the serialization for you: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/api.html#id12 https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/api.html#id12
lolive 8y ago
CSV is your best option. CSVW is a CSV+a metadata file to convert the tabular data to graph data (plus it types the nodes and relationships of the graph). You may want to have a look at it.
lolive 8y ago
You probably ask here the most controversial question of the Web today. The fact that CSV is the prefered answer is a HUUUGE fail.
rufuspollock 8y ago
Suggest CSV plus a Table Schema in a nice little Data Package: https://frictionlessdata.io/data-packages/ https://frictionlessdata.io/data-packages/ There's a wide set of tooling for Tabular Data Packages, plus underlying data is CSV which anyone can use. If you want this done automatically you can just publish your CSV to https://datahub.io/ https://datahub.io/ and your Tabular Data Package is made automatically for you.

polkapolka 8y ago

Csv and a permitive license like CC0. Provide good meta data to make provenance easier. Mark up your dataset with schema.org.

combatentropy 8y ago

I vote CSV. - simple - lightweight - open It's easy for the consumer of your data to convert a CSV to whatever format they need. - spreadsheet, for personal analysis - SQL database, for industrial-strength analysis - HTML, for pretty output to their users

lolive 8y ago
Oh, and don't forget that CSV is a rigorous data format, with many tricks. Don't just append some text together, separated by commas, and call it CSV. Instead, use a dedicated lib to create the CSV for you.

heinrichhartman 8y ago

1) Put it on figshare or github. Your website might be dead next year. Those services have a better chance of survival. 2) CSV, JSON works fine if your dataset is just a few numbers and strings. GitHub will preview csv files as HTML tables. 3) If you need the efficiency of binary data and more robust data containers I would look into - Parquet https://parquet.apache.org/documentation/latest/ https://parquet.apache.org/documentation/latest/ and - Arvo http://avro.apache.org/ http://avro.apache.org/ http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2009/11/avro-a-new-format-for-data-interchange/ http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/2009/11/avro-a-new-format-for-... 4) DataScientists work with R/Pandas "DataFrames". If you are familiar with either one, import the data into a data frame and use an export method to do the serialization for you: https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/api.html#id12 https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/api.html#id12

lolive 8y ago

CSV is your best option. CSVW is a CSV+a metadata file to convert the tabular data to graph data (plus it types the nodes and relationships of the graph). You may want to have a look at it.

lolive 8y ago

You probably ask here the most controversial question of the Web today. The fact that CSV is the prefered answer is a HUUUGE fail.

rufuspollock 8y ago

Suggest CSV plus a Table Schema in a nice little Data Package: https://frictionlessdata.io/data-packages/ https://frictionlessdata.io/data-packages/ There's a wide set of tooling for Tabular Data Packages, plus underlying data is CSV which anyone can use. If you want this done automatically you can just publish your CSV to https://datahub.io/ https://datahub.io/ and your Tabular Data Package is made automatically for you.