kendra

Importing catalogues

We need to import arbritary catalogues (spreadsheets) into RDFable Drupal nodes.

We suggest the following as a way forward: before implementing this, we want to see if this would be useful to the broader Drupal RDF community, and whether it is compatible with other existing proposals:

Option 1: Dynamically create content types

For each import format dynamically create a node type that matches the field structure. Provide an RDF mapping for the created node type to enable the imported items to be tagged up with RDF.

Option 2: Define a generic content type for imports

Spreadsheets are imported into two node types. The 'header' includes the spreadsheet file and information about it's structure. A second content type is used to import each row. A row is a list of attributes taken from the column data for that row.

We also need to consider round-tripping issues, as follows:

We (the Kendra team) are in a bit of a quandary. We need to implement our EU funded project (Kendra Signpost) using Drupal but we are unsure, given recent D7/RDF announcements, as to which direction to take, namely D6 or D7 and using which modules.

Here is a brief description of what we want to achieve with questions as how to proceed - given that we have developers that can contribute to collaborative efforts so long as there is mutual benefit and we get to build Kendra Signpost.

Overview

• Kendra is being paid by the EU to build Kendra Signpost which needs to launch middle of 2010. Let's put this EU money to good use.
• Initially we wanted to build this system using only Drupal 7 but there are a number of modules that are just not ready for us yet. But as soon as Drupal 7 is ready we want to move all projects to it. So, we need to have clear upgrade paths when we choose Drupal modules. And perhaps only work on and contribute to efforts that are both Drupal 6 and 7 simultaneously.