File formats
The data that Manchester City Council is making available under an open licence is supplied in a number of appropriate formats
CSV Files
Comma (or Character) Separated Value
files are compatible with all types of spreadsheet and data management
software and can also be read and edited in a text editor. They are
preferable to proprietary file formats such as Microsoft Word or Excel
or Adobe PDF. The Government are recommending CSV as a suitable format
for open data to be supplied by public bodies and are mandating it in
some cases.
KML Files
KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files
were developed as a proprietary format to describe features on a map.
The format is now available for anyone to use and is compatible with
most freely available web mapping systems, including Bing Maps
(Microsoft Ltd) and Google Maps.
XML Files
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a
standard format for exchanging information. It is particularly useful
for information that will be used on a website.
RDFa Files
RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a type of XML variant that describes the relationship between the information that it contains and externally defined information. RDFa (RDF attributes) describes a method of adding additional information to a web page so that the information that the page contains can be extracted and used by others. For example, on this website the Election Results section, in common with a number of other local authority election results sections, is marked up as RDFa so that it can be read by third parties and reused. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides a handy utility that can be used with a web browser to view RDFa web pages in formal RDF format.