Joined tables (for OCDS Lite)

[sorenabell]

Based on the OCDS Lite spreadsheet, there are going to be only 4 tables for OCDS Lite: Tenders, Awards, Awards Suppliers, Contracts.

• We need to join columns from the "root tables", i.e. to include columns from the Tenders table into the Contracts table.
• [AFTER JOIN FUNCTIONALITY IS ADDED] If we split the Contracts table we will receive the same table as Awards Suppliers (that we already have). So our proposal for this case would be to throw out ["/awards/suppliers/id", "/awards/suppliers/name"] columns from the Contracts table (especially since this is a list).
  If we do not split the Contracts table, then these "suppliers" will generate columns like /awards/suppliers/0/id, /awards/suppliers/1/id, etc.
  Our proposal would be to remove all the columns related to the Awards table from the Contracts table.

We want to make the Lite version of the data as easy to analyse by non-experienced data users as much as possible.

[jpmckinney]

cc @sabahfromlondon

I think it is important to have awards information in the contracts table. In some datasets, the number of suppliers per award is bounded (e.g. maximum 1 or 2). In such cases, it is fine to have the suppliers in the same table.

For datasets where there can be a large number of suppliers: In most cases, there is still only 1, with a small percentage having more than 1. In that case, we had discussed the possibility of filling in awards/suppliers/id, etc. if there is only 1 supplier. If there is more than 1, then leave it empty and add those suppliers to the separate suppliers table.

[jpmckinney]

Related issue in Spoonbill library: open-contracting/spoonbill#36