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Comment by mjs | Hacker News Reader

Hey, that's some quality XML they're pumping out there. From their population data:

  <ROWSET>
    <ROW>
      <Area_Code>00AA</Area_Code>
      <Area_Name>City of London</Area_Name>
      <Persons-1801>129000</Persons-1801>
      <Persons-1811>121000</Persons-1811>
      <Persons-1821>125000</Persons-1821>
      <!-- ... -->
    </ROW>
  </ROWSET>

http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/historic-census-...

Embedding the year into the element name, useful that.

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Personally I prefer http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/health/alcohol-indicator... and its amazing <Persons_aged_under_18_years_admitted_to_hospital_with_alcohol_specific_conditions_Crude_Rate_per_100000_population_Numbers_-_2005-2006_to_2007-2008> element.

But, as their title suggests, this is a first step.

you could send them a tweet http://twitter.com/londondatastore and ask them to fix it

I've sent them a couple of bugs / broken links and they've fixed & replied within a few minutes.

edit: they've just tweeted about the xml structure so hopefully will sort it out soon.

o, they also have a google group for things that need more than 140 chars - http://groups.google.com/group/londondatastore

There's also things like this: http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/crime-community-safety/a...

  <Ward_Code>00AAFB</Ward_Code>
  <Ward_Name>Aldgate</Ward_Name>
  <District_Code>00AA</District_Code>
  <District_Name>City of London</District_Name>
  <Count_12-2007/>
  <Count_1-2008/>
  <Count_2-2008/>
  <Count_3-2008/>
  <Count_4-2008/>
  <Count_5-2008/>
  <Count_6-2008/>

So... is that zero (a safe area) or no data (an unknown quantity)?

I noticed this too. As a Londoner, I am pretty excited by this release of data, but, seriously, could they not use attributes for things like the year?!

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