I’d appreciate comments on the feasibility of using AirTable for small databases of services with associated HSDS data and providing from that an API feed compliant with HSDA.
In the UK (or just England) we have a possible use case for making available small sets of data pertaining to services provided nationally for consumption by every local authority. @iansingo has suggested that this would be a good way to draw people to consuming ORUK API feeds rather than maintaining the data manually in every local authority.
There are three possible impediments to this approach:
I don’t know AirTable, but I think @sasha is using it
The free version of AirTable allows for very few records (the limit imposed covers all rows in all tables), but it may be enough for a proof of concept
The AirTable API is currently not HSDA compliant, I think. I’d like it to pass the UK API validator that is shortly to be released
I’d appreciate comments and an idea of how much effort would be needed to make this work from wise people like @devin.
Hey Mike, great timing! We’re currently in the process of using the Airtable API to integrate the new HSDS-compatible base in Washington. Things quickly get outside of my technical expertise in this conversation, though, so I’m also tagging in @skyleryoung and @DrewW who are overseeing that process.
Whenever someone says Airtable, I magically appear haha.
As Sasha linked, we’ve been working on a compressed, HSDS compliant Airtable base for extremely small to small local groups to get data online and at least theoretically accessible by API. The API stuff is out of my wheelhouse (I’m a no-code Airtable guy) but I’m happy to provide any and all insight on Airtable.
On your second point Mike, one good thing about the compressed base is it reduces overall record count compared to a full HSDS 3.1 expression. We’re working with one small community partner right now who has about 70 services in a base which is equating to 650 records (1,000 records is the free limit). The other thing I pitch is that I’ve always had good experiences with Airtable’s Non-profit pricing, they’re quick to approve and the price goes down to $144/year for the Team plan (that’s in the states, dunno about UK conversion).
One other thought I’ve had in this realm related to Airtable is creating an extension to support this information sharing, akin to this extension by Common Approach to Measure Impact, a Canadian impact measurement standard. I wonder if building an extension that accompanies a base template would help unify data exports. That part is a bit beyond me, but just a thought I keep returning to.
We are building a connector to our data federation platform from the Airtable schema that @DrewW and @sasha referenced. This will include the ability to replicate that data through our HSDA endpoints (such as they are) as well.
Granted, it’s a bit of a heavy handed approach, albeit a standardized one that scales nicely. I think there’s opportunity to create a more simplified micro service or extension as Drew mentioned that skins the Airtable APIs with HSDA.
Some additional layer of abstraction will be required in any case though. Even when a Base in Airtable matches HSDA perfectly, the default APIs won’t match HSDS without some work.