The future is open!
Under this Open Data Streaming Program (ODSP), anyone can publish streams of realtime data for free on the Data Stream Exchange (DSX) platform, provided the data is made freely available for others to consume, and subject to a fair use policy.
The Open Data Streaming Program: Filling a critical gap
The majority of open data available today is static or historical data, which could be anything from a few minutes to many years old. There are plenty of places where organizations can publish this static data for others to consume, without needing to worry about the infrastructure or how people access it. And because the data is static, it’s generally only available using pull mechanisms, where the data consumer must actively request information from its source.
This is all great, but it doesn’t address the growing number of use cases where the requirement is for realtime data, which can be delivered to its destination within milliseconds of being created.
When you look at the open realtime data landscape, the choice of hosting and delivery mechanism is much more limited. This is the gap the Open Data Streaming Program aims to fill.
In essence, the ODSP seeks to liberate the many sources of realtime data around the world, by providing the means to:
- Enable producers of open realtime data to publish their streams, without needing to think about infrastructure, protocols, APIs or how many consumers there might be
- Push this realtime data to any number of consumers as soon as it becomes available, using the consumer’s chosen means of delivery
How the Open Data Streaming Program works
If you’re a data producer, you can publish and distribute open realtime data on the Ably DSX without charge. This includes a listing in the Ably Hub, the app-store-like dataset portal which is explained below.
The DSX supports open protocols (including AMQP, STOMP and MQTT), SDKs in every popular platform, which you can embed to consume realtime data. In addition, DSX provides a unified API that enables you to combine multiple sources over a single, multiplexed connection. And it also includes the Reactor, which can push to third-party systems, such as serverless functions, webhooks or Kafka, RabbitMQ or Kinesis.
The Ably Hub
The Ably Hub makes it easy for developers and other data consumers to find your data streams and build innovative applications around them. It already contains a wide variety of realtime data, including:
- London transport information from Transport for London
- Betting stats from public sports betting markets, and a range of other sports data
- Predictions from PredictIt
- News articles from HackerNews and Reddit
- Bitcoin price and information from Coinbase and BitFlyer
- Financial information from IEX Trading
- Weather data from Open Weather Map
… and we’re working on many more, based on user demand. Suggest a new source.
Liberate your data freely
We’re actively looking for new open realtime data sources to host on the DSX and showcase via the Ably Hub. If you’ve got data that needs liberating, please get in touch. Equally, if you want to consume free open streaming data, simply head over to the Ably Hub.
Why are we doing this? We love Open Source! :)
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