Feature 08 / 17
Add public reference data
Find public datasets in the OpenVaultDB Directory and read them beside your own sources, with their release, provenance and licence kept with the query.
Public data lookupIn development
The problem
When the answer needs facts your database does not hold, such as a country’s currency, where do they come from?
Reference data such as countries, currencies or population gets copied into spreadsheets and pasted into queries. Nobody remembers which release it came from, under what licence, or whether it still matches.
A clearer workflow
Find a provider
Look up a public dataset in the OVDB Directory, with its source, release and licence. That Directory is a catalogue of database instances, separate from OVDB (OpenVaultDB) session storage, which is DataTug’s own working context.
Connect your field
Choose a source, table and field in your project. DataTug resolves it to the provider through declared mappings and meanings, never by guessing from names.
Run within limits
Run explicitly with bounded keys, rows and time, and keep the source and release pins with the saved query.
Example investigation plan
Show an order in the customer’s currency
Starting question
What is order 11045 worth in Canadian dollars?
Steps to follow
- Find the ship-to country of order 11045 in Northwind: Tsawassen, Canada.
- Look up Canada in a public countries dataset to find its currency, CAD.
- Convert the order total with a dated USD to CAD exchange rate recorded with the query. Northwind amounts are treated as USD, which is an assumption.
Evidence to assemble
Evidence to assemble: the order’s ship-to country, that country’s currency from a public provider, and a dated exchange rate. Public data lookup is in development, and the countries provider is not published in the Directory yet.
Explore the demo project sourcesWhat changes
Public facts arrive with their provenance, and a saved query records exactly which release it used.
The case of order 11045 · Act 4 · Add the world
In the demo story
Sarah adds public countries data: Tsawassen is in Canada, which uses CAD, and a dated exchange rate shows the order’s value in Canadian dollars.
The guided demo of this story is being built.