[Drupal] KmData, PHP, & Drupal

[Jason Little]

Drupalers,

At the last DrupalSig, we discussed KmData, a recent university initiative, led by the staff at OSU Pro, to provide a single point of contact for data from multiple university systems.
http://kmdata.osu.edu

KmData will eventually supplant OSU Pro's existing XML feeds.  They already have a few experimental query-able feeds available.  Looking beyond people, kmdata will be providing information about many different types of resources (courses, publications, etc).

In the PHP/Drupal landscape, there are many things that we can do with this data (a few described below).  We'd like to build a common set of tools around this new data source for the Drupal platform.  The more people who work on these tools, the better they will be.

If you are interested in participating in the design or development of Drupal/PHP/KmData projects, please list your availability on the doodle poll below.
http://www.doodle.com/vuh7km4afiihdsui

In our first meeting, we'll be discussing which projects people are interested in and how the Drupal and PHP sides of an API might work.  Anyone with input and inclination is welcome.  You don't need to commit development time to participate.    Since Drupal 7 is out, but Drupal 6 is still more mainstream, we'll be developing for both platforms.

If you can't make any of the times in the poll, enter your name in the poll with no availability and we'll make sure you get included in future discussions.

Best,
Jason Little
Web Services
College of Engineering

Need help?  Submit a ticket online.
https://engineering.osu.edu/help


Possible Projects
*Drupal API
It would be handy for there to be a Drupal api for KmData that other modules could extend and consume.  Such an api might handle things like caching and views integration in a uniform manner.
*PHP API
We could build up a KmData object oriented model in PHP and build a procedural Drupal API on top of it.  This way, there was a nice OO interface to KmData for use in other PHP projects.  Together, drupal and PHP apis may help insulate higher level code from changes at KmData as they incorporate more data sources.  Separating the PHP api from the drupal api may promote more participation in terms of development and usage.
*Directories & Profiles
In engineering, we presently integrate with OSU Pro via an api, cck field, features layer, and theme layer.  We'd like to replace this with a KmData based solution.
*Course Listings & Information
In engineering, we presently get this from the data warehouse.  We'd like to rewrite it to use KmData to simplify our infrastructure and make it easier to share code.

Option Lists (Webforms, CCK, Other Modules)
The 3.0 version of webforms allows programmers to define option sets for forms including keys and values which a user can then choose when building forms.  Perhaps we could use KmData to power a group of OSU specific option sets tied directly to university systems.  List of majors, departments, buildings, subjects, etc.   This same module could expose these to cck and other module developers.
Individual Faculty Sites (ie. OpenScholar)
There has been some interest in Open Scholar which is the standard distribution for individual academic profiles.  Integrating it with OSUPro/KmData makes sense.
Reports
What if a department site could have a summary statistics page (undergrad enrollment, grad enrollment, faculty, staff, # classes, etc) fed by KmData and updated automatically?  Maybe we could build a generalized module for reusable reports.
Tagging
If bob.52 is referenced in news story xyz, tag the story with a kmdata id for bob.52. If his name changes, the tag sticks.  If article used in another site, the tag sticks (unlike taxonomy term ids). Better than emplids.
Your Idea Here!
There are a million things we could do with KmData.  Let's do them together.

* Projects with an asterisk are things engineering is committed to working on.


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