Background
DDI on Rails is an open-source application for documenting longitudinal research data, including multiple versions and distributions. Researchers can use it to explore data and compile personalised datasets.
Role and approach
The project was initiated by Marcel Hebing during his time at DIW Berlin, as part of his PhD thesis A Metadata-Driven Approach to Panel Data Management and its Application in DDI on Rails. The work combined metadata modelling, research-data infrastructure and web application development.
Deliverables
- Open-source web application
- metadata model for longitudinal research data
- infrastructure for exploring, compiling and documenting datasets
Result
DDI on Rails provided the software basis for the SOEP metadata service paneldata.org.
Open Source
The source code is available on GitHub.