Data hub

A data hub (data management system, or DMS) is software for collaborating on gathering, sharing and using data.

The term is usually used to refer to the new web-based generation of such products. They can be either platforms for handling lots of different kinds of data, or in verticals specialising in one particular field.

Features

At core, a DMS is a list of datasets that are of diverse schema.

Once you have that, people expect the following features, and/or tight integration with tools that provide them:

• Load and update data from any source (ETL)
• Store datasets and index them for querying
• View, analyse and update data in a tabular interface (spreadsheet)
• Visualise data, for example with charts or maps
• Analyse data, for example with statistics and machine learning
• Organise many people to enter or correct data (crowd-sourcing)
• Measure and ensure the quality of data, and its provenance
• Permissions; data can be open, private or shared
• Find datasets, and organise them to help others find them
• Sell data, sharing processing costs between users

List of data hubs

• CKAN
• InfoChimps
• DataMarket
• ScraperWiki
• BuzzData
• Kasabi
• Factual
• GeoIQ
• Socrata
• Windows Azure MarketPlace
• Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine
• PANDA project

It's considered that a desktop operating system (e.g. Unix, OSX, Windows) is the legacy DMS that we use at the moment to do the things that would be better done by a good DMS.