Offer Open Datasets via the FIWARE Store
The FIWARE Store is one of the portals deployed in FIWARE Lab, which is the main showcase of the project. Therefore, it is the best way, together with the Open Data GE and its reference implementation (CKAN), for advertising your datasets and data APIs, and make them available for prospective users. However, this is not the only advantage of publishing the data in the FIWARE Store since you will also get the possibility of:
- Managing the users that can access your data: this is very important since in some cases you have confidential information that cannot be spread.
- Forcing the users to accept some terms and conditions for using your data: in some cases, you will want the users of your data to accept some terms for using it (i.e. you want to offer your data for free but you have to ensure that this data is not used with commercial purposes).
- Charging the users for accessing your data: there are some conditions
(conflicts of interest, security, competence...) that force you to publish
data with cost. In that cases, you can use CKAN and the FIWARE Store
together to charge users for using your data. You are able to choose
different payment models:
- One time payments: users pay once.
- Recurring payments: users are forced to pay periodically (monthly, yearly, etc) for using your data. In addition, users will be able to cancel the subscription but they won’t be able to access the data anymore.
- Usage payment: users pay based on the amount of information consumed.
Once that your data (datasets or context information) is published in CKAN, you are able to publish it in the FIWARE Store. You can do it in two different ways: through the CKAN interface or through the Store. The first option is the easiest one, but is more constrained since you can only provide an offering with a single product: the dataset itself. On the other hand, if you choose the second option, you will be able to offer the dataset in a bundle with other resources (such as widgets, apps, etc) that can add some extra value to your data.