Introducing new Fusion Tables API

Posted by Warren Shen, Fusion Tables team

We are very pleased to announce the public availability of the new Fusion Tables API. The new API includes all of the functionality of the existing SQL API, plus the ability to read and modify table and column metadata as well as the definitions of styles and templates for data visualization. This API is also integrated with the Google APIs console which lets developers manage all their Google APIs in one place and take advantage of built-in reporting and authentication features.

With this launch, we are also announcing a six month deprecation period for the existing SQL API. Since the new API includes all of the functionality of the existing SQL API, developers can easily migrate their applications using our migration guide.

For a detailed description of the features in the new API, please refer to the API documentation.

Working with your Data: Easier and More Fun

Posted by Rebecca Shapley, Fusion Tables Team

The Fusion Tables team has been a little quiet lately, but that’s just because we’ve been working hard on a whole bunch of new stuff that makes it easier to discover, manage and visualize data.

• A new way to look at your Fusion Table - Try the “Experimental” version of our Fusion Tables web application. The new design helps you explore and collaborate better on data. Faceted search make it easier to dive into a big data set and specify what you want to see. Multiple tabs let you experiment, trying different views of a table. And the new card layout lets you give a row of data your own custom layout. Give it a spin.

• More visualizations on lots of data - People love using Fusion Tables to put data on a map, but there are new visualizations available in our Experiment menu.Try the Zoomable Line chart. Playing with social network data? Try out the Network Graph visualization.

• New Fusion Tables API works great with javascript - Our new API, currently available to trusted testers, is more powerful and easier to use. The API can now return data in JSON so it’s easy to get data and manipulate it with javascript, right from the browser. You can now also RESTfully modify tables, templates and map styles. Want to try it out early and give your feedback? We’re looking for Trusted Testers... just join this group to become one.

• New open-source tools library welcomes your contributions - Fond of Fusion Tables Layer wizard? Just recently discovered the chart creator? These great point-n-click tools and more for working with Fusion Tables are now available in the Fusion Tables open source library. Please contribute your tools and enhancements!

You’ll notice a bunch of our new things are “Experimental”....that’s because we need you to use them and tell us what you love and what could be better. But we didn’t want to keep them secret any longer! On behalf of the Fusion Table team, thanks for all you do with Fusion Tables, and we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback.

President's Council Recommends Open Data for Federal Agencies

Posted by Alon Halevy, Senior Staff Research Scientist

Cross-posted with the Public Sector and Elections Lab Blog

One of the things I most enjoy about working on data management is the ability to work on a variety of problems, both in the private sector and in government. I recently had the privilege of serving on a working group of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) studying the challenges of conserving the nation’s ecosystems. The report, titled “Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy” was presented to President Obama on July 18th, 2011. The full report is now available to the public.

The press release announcing the report summarizes its recommendations:

The Federal Government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an independent council of the Nation’s leading scientists and engineers. The report also recommends that the Nation apply modern informatics technologies to the vast stores of biodiversity data already collected by various Federal agencies in order to increase the usefulness of those data for decision- and policy-making.

One of the key challenges we face in assessing the condition of ecosystems is that a lot of the data pertaining to these systems is locked up in individual databases. Even though this data is often collected using government funds, it is not always available to the public and in other cases available but not in usable formats. This is a classical example of a data integration problem that occurs in many other domains.

The report calls for creating an ecosystem, EcoINFORMA, around data. The crucial piece of this ecosystem is to make the relevant data publicly available in a timely manner and, most importantly, in a machine readable form. Publishing data embedded in a PDF file is a classical example of what does not count as being machine readable. For example, if you are publishing a tabular data set, then a computer program should be able to directly access the meta-data (e.g., column names, date collected) and the data rows without having to heuristically extract it from surrounding text.

Once the data is published, it can be discovered by search engines. Data from multiple sources can be combined to provide additional insight, and the data can be visualized and analyzed by sophisticated tools. The main point is that innovation should be pursued by many parties (academics, commercial, government), each applying their own expertise and passions.

There is a subtle point about how much meta-data should be provided before publishing the data. Unfortunately, requiring too much meta-data (e.g., standard schemas) often stymies publication. When meta-data exists, that’s great, but when it’s not there or is not complete, we should still publish the data in a timely manner. If the data is valuable and discoverable, there will be someone in the ecosystem who will enhance the data in an appropriate fashion.

I look forward to seeing this ecosystem evolve and excited that Google Fusion Tables, our own cloud-based service for visualizing, sharing and integrating structured data, can contribute to its development.

Make beautiful interactive maps even faster with new additions to the Fusion Tables API

Posted by Rebecca Shapley, Jayant Madhavan, Rod McChesney, and Kathryn Hurley, Fusion Tables team

Google Fusion Tables is a modern data management and publishing web application that makes it easy to host, manage, collaborate on, visualize, and publish data tables online. Since we first launched Fusion Tables almost two years ago, we've seen tremendous interest and usage from dozens of areas, from journalists to scientists to open-data entrepreneurs, and have been excited to see the innovative applications that our users have been able to rapidly build and publish.

We've been working hard to enrich what Fusion Tables offers for customization and control of visual presentation. This past fall we added the ability to style the colors and icons of mapped data with a few clicks in the Fusion Tables web app. This spring we made it easy to use HTML and customize what users see in the info window that appears after a click on the map. We’ve enjoyed seeing the impressive visualizations you have created. Some, like the Guardian’s map of deprivation in the UK, were created strictly within the web app, while apps like the Bay Citizen’s Bike Accident tracker and the Texas Tribune’s Census 2010 interactive map take advantage of the Fusion Tables SQL API to do even more customization.


Of course, it’s not always convenient to do everything through a web interface, and today we’re delighted to invite trusted testers to try out the new Fusion Tables Styling and Info Window API. Now developers will be able to set a table’s map colors and info windows with code.

Even better, this new Styling and Info Window API will be part of the Google APIs Console. The Google APIs Console helps you manage projects and teams, provision access quotas, and view analytics and metrics on your API usage. It also offers sample code that supports the OAuth 2.0 client key management flow you need to build secure apps for your users.

So if you've been looking for a way to programmatically create highly-customizable map visualizations from data tables, check out our new APIs and let us know what you think! To become a trusted tester, please apply to join the Google Group and tell us a little bit about how you use the Fusion Tables API.