Linked Datasets

Linked datasets are special kind of datasets in OSF-Drupal. These OSF-Drupal linked datasets are references to datasets that haven't been created using that OSF-Drupal node. Normally, if a dataset is created or imported on a OSF-Drupal node, OSF-Drupal will create the Dataset and generate its own URI (the dataset id). The URI will be based on the OSF-Drupal node's URL, and Drupal's internal auto-incrementing node counter.

However, datasets can be created from outside of a OSF-Drupal node. Datasets can directly be created on these OSF Web Service instance by querying the Dataset: Create web service endpoint. Since each OSF-Drupal node uses one, or multiple, OSF Web Service instances, one can link to these "external" datasets.

Requirements
The only requirement for a OSF-Drupal node to be able to link to a dataset is that the server hosting the OSF-Drupal instance has the proper rights on the dataset.

Creating a Linked Dataset
Linking a OSF-Drupal node to a particular dataset URI is quite easy. One has to follow these steps:


 * 1) The user has to go to the dataset (content type) creation page: http://localhost/conStruct/dataset/
 * 2) Additionally, there is a "create a new dataset" link from the OSF-Drupal dataset module: http://localhost/conStruct/dataset/
 * 3) The user has to provide 4 different things:
 * 4) The title of the dataset (this is the title used to refer to this dataset, on that OSF-Drupal node)
 * 5) The description of the dataset (this is the description used to refer to this dataset, on that OSF-Drupal node)
 * 6) The IP address / domain name of the OSF Web Service instance where the dataset is hosted (note: if you specify the domain name, remove any protocol identifier such as "http://" and trailing slashes
 * 7) The URI of the dataset on that OSF Web Service instance.
 * 8) Finally click the "save" button to create that linked dataset.

Once the linked dataset is created, it will appear as is (a linked dataset) in the list of datasets available in the OSF-Drupal dataset module. Once that dataset is linked to a OSF-Drupal node, it will be available like any other dataset for searching, browsing and such. Multiple datasets, from different sources, can be aggregated and used on the same OSF-Drupal node. This is where the power of distributed OSF Web Service nodes starts to appear.

Permissions
There are a few permissions usecases depending on the permissions your OSF-Drupal node have on the remote OSF Web Service instance.

One can link to a dataset which is World Readable, or that the linking OSF-Drupal instance has access to.

However, if the OSF-Drupal node doesn't have full access to the OSF Web Service instance (so, if it doesn't have access to the /wsf/ and /wsf/datasets/ internal datasets of the OSF Web Service instance, it won't be able to create new permissions, on that linked datasets, for its own users.

Depending what is needed, and what operation you want to perform on such a linked dataset, you will have to negotiate the rights to do something additional than accessing (reading) them with the system administrator and managers of that remote OSF Web Service node.