DataShare is a .NET application developed by the London Borough of Redbridge to enable an organisation to publish open data for downloading in tabular format or viewing online as tables, charts and maps.

See Redbridge’s datashare for an example of a live instance.

Redbridge made DataShare open source in March 2018. It may be used and modified subject to crediting the London Borough of Redbridge. Software support is provided as part of the Local Government Association’s (LGA) open data work via the LG Inform Plus programme.

Email the LGA's LG Inform Plus Support team if you need help.

See the DataShare Installation Guide for details. The installer uses WiX to install. It will expect a connection string to a SQL Server database, so an empty database needs to be set up in advance, along with the user who will access the database.

The /admin page provides options to administer DataShare and lets a super administrator set up new users who can upload data, create/edit schemas (defining the structure of data) or act as super administrators themselves. See the DataShare Admin User Guide.

Datashare provides a simple way for councils to delegate publishing to staff in different departments who simply upload data in CSV format.

DataShare implements output of an inventory of all your published datasets compliant with the inventory schema. Inventories are generated in XML format from the /api/esdInventory address of each DataShare instance, eg http://data.redbridge.gov.uk/api/esdInventory .

Your datasets are automatically published at Find open data (aka data.gov.uk) once you’ve configured it to harvest from your inventory.

The same is true of the LGA’s catalogue of open datasets. Configure harvesting at http://inventories.opendata.esd.org.uk/harvesters/add

Post issues here or email support@esd.org.uk if you have queries on using DataShare or would like to see improvements.

The LGA’s technical partner, Porism, can arrange to host an instance of DataShare for your council or other organisation.