15 November 2010, 12:48

Google releases Refine 2.0 data sifting tool

Google Logo Google has announced the release of Refine 2.0, an open source software tool for working with messy data sets, formerly known as Freebase Gridworks. Using Refine 2.0, users can clean up data set inconsistencies, convert them from one format into another and extend them using new data from external web services or other databases.

Version 2.0 of the web data sifting tool features a new extensions architecture and a reconciliation framework for linking records to other databases, such as Freebase. Other changes include a new JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) importer, various bug fixes and the addition of a number of new transformation commands and expressions.

In July of this year, Google acquired Metaweb which originally created the Freebase Gridworks open source project. To date, Freebase Gridworks 1.0 has been used by, for example, the Chicago Tribune, ProPublica and data.gov.uk.

Further information about the release, including three introductory videos, can be found in a post on the Open Source at Google blog and in the change log. Google Refine 2.0 is available to download from Google Code and is released under a New BSD License.

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