SDMX Tools corrective and evolutive maintenance

Funding: EC/ Eurostat

Detailed project description:

The objective of this project is the maintenance of the software tools and infrastructures that have been developed under Eurostat premises. This objective entails also the development of new functionalities based upon the requirements that users specify while working with the SDMX tools. The latter concern the software tools that have been installed in Eurostat like SDMX Registry, SODI Processing Environment as well as the software tools that Eurostat publishes under European Union Public License like the SDMX Converter tool, the Data Structure Wizard, the SDMX-RI and Eurostat’s branch of SdmxSource. An additional aim of this project is to provide consultancy on the SDMX standard by supporting user requests that derive from the experience of installing and using Eurostat’s Open Source Software components and tools. Moreover, assisting Eurostat into setting up the infrastructure for sharing and promoting their OSS components and tools is also key to this project.

In order to achieve the aforementioned objectives, the following activities have been carried out:

- Provision of solutions on technical problems, development of new functionalities based on user’s requirements as well as redefinition of software requirements in the following infrastructures:

1) SDMX Reference Infrastructure: a set of OSS components that facilitates Data Providers to expose their dissemination environment using SDMX SOAP & REST web services, as well as Graphical User Interfaces, with zero programming. Supports most popular database vendors for dissemination (Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL), as well as other dissemination formats, i.e. the PC-Axis 2008 dissemination standard.

Comprises the following key components:

- Web Services (.NET & Java)
- Data Retriever (.NET & Java)
- Structure Retriever (.NET & Java)
- Web Client (ASP.NET and Java/JavaScript/Jsp)
- Mapping Assistant (.NET)
- Test Client (.NET)
- Mapping Store (Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySQL)

2) Data Structure Wizard (aka DSW): Java application for the creation, management and maintenance of SDMX 2.0 and 2.1 structural metadata.
3) SDMX Converter: Java application for converting between all the existing formats of the SDMX 2.0 and 2.1, CSV, GESMES (TS, 2.1, DSIS), Excel (Eurosat’s excel mapping template) and DSPL (Google’s Dataset Publishing Language).
4) SODI Processing Environment: A central data collection system based on web feeds, SDMX Registry and SDMX Web Services.
- SODI Administration / Monitoring (aka SAM): web application for the management and monitoring of Eurostat SPE (SODI Processing Environment).
- SDMX Pull Requestor
- SDMX Web Service
- SDMX Extractor / Query Formulator
- SDMX Loader
- SDMX Publisher / Scheduler
- SODI eDAMIS Interface – eDAMIS Web Service Client
5) SDMX Registry: Eurostat’s SDMX 2.0 and 2.1 Registry service. It comprises SOAP and REST web service interfaces, as well as a full featured JavaScript graphical user interface, with sophisticated access control mechanism and search features.
- Provision of support mechanism to users working with SDMX tools and infrastructures.
- Organisation and participation in technical workshops with the aim of promoting the reuse of the OSS components (like the SDMX-RI) and providing assistance to end users and developers.

Assisting Eurostat in setting up git source code repositories and nexus repositories for promoting the reuse and evolution of Eurostat’s OSS components.