Practical Portability is an open source project which aims to develop the middleware required to create a single application suite from existing best-of-breed solutions, and in doing so, to develop a reference implementation of DataPortability.

By building a real world implementation of DataPortability, Practical Portability demonstrates the key benefits of DataPortability, while at the same time providing worked examples for developers looking at building their own implementations, and training materials for new developers looking to get involved.

Our approach is to take established best-of-breed Open Source solutions as our starting points, and to extend them via a variety of plugins, widgets, themes and installers.

The desired end product will satisfy two key requirements:

  1. Creation of a seamless user experience across applications

    This will allow for the creation of a single unified user profile within what appears to be a single application, and the creation of friendships across applications. For example your blogging profile within your blogging application is also your forums profile within your forums application, and you have friends over in your social bookmarking application.

  2. Creation of a seamless administrative experience across applications

    This will allow administrators to manage several applications via a single aministration console. For example, you may find yourself moderating forum content within a forum application while at the same time approving blog registrations within a blogging application and all the while you are doing it within a single administration interface.

The project focuses on real world scenarios and actual requirements, and will be used as a demonstration of how the standards and principles of DataPortability can be used to solve actual real world needs.

Practical Portability is about the implementation of ideas rather than the development of the ideas themselves. We are the doers that support the thinkers. For this reason we steer clear, where we can, of getting hung up on specifics. That’s for another project another team, another time.

This website and the documents found here are, like the project itself, works in progress. That’s the reason for putting it together within a Wiki. If you take offense, if you find something missing, if you don’t like our wording or our approach, change it - join the project by emailing one of the project owners (Richard Pendergast or Jacob Chapel) and edit it. We welcome your contribution.

Foundation Software

The solutions chosen as the initial starting points for the project were selected simply because they conform to a very basic set of requirements and because they are known to the developers initially making up the team. This does not in any way represent a concrete or final list. It is simply a beginning, a foundation upon which to build.

Desired Outcomes

  1. To provide a DataPortability compliant application suite built upon established Open Source best of breed solutions

  2. To provide Application developers with worked examples of the DataPortability Guidelines

  3. To provide a positive supportive environment encouraging those with little experience to get on board and contribute to a large Open Source development

  4. To provide a reference implementation for DataPortability

Getting Involved

Getting involved is as simple as visiting the Workgroup and signing up.