humind
The MSNI humanitarian needs framework as code, rewritten and re-broken every year
Comparison · Infra & APIs
bcdata vs campsismod
A side-by-side editorial comparison of bcdata and campsismod — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
bcdata vs campsismod: at a glance
What is bcdata?
The R gateway to B.C.'s data catalogue, mostly busy keeping pace with the servers behind it.
bcdata searches the British Columbia Data Catalogue and pulls records from it, including spatial layers retrieved through WMS and WFS with dplyr-style filtering translated into CQL queries sent to the server. The recent releases are small and corrective: 0.5.3 fixes malformed CQL generated by geometry predicates such as INTERSECTS, which the server had been rejecting outright, and 0.5.2 drops a leaflet extension dependency in favour of a base leaflet call. Cadence is a few releases a year.
What is campsismod?
The model layer under Campsis, renamed in step with it and increasingly JSON-addressable.
Campsismod holds the model object layer for the Campsis pharmacometric simulation suite: reading, editing and writing model definitions that Campsis then simulates. Its recent releases track a single programme, adding a JSON route into model objects and then renaming the whole API to snake_case in 1.4.0, a week before Campsis 1.9.0 did the same. Release notes are terse issue lists, so the reasoning behind each change has to be read from the sibling package.
bcdata vs campsismod: editorial side-by-side
bcdata
0.0INFRA · APIS
The R gateway to B.C.'s data catalogue, mostly busy keeping pace with the servers behind it.
◆ Current state
bcdata searches the British Columbia Data Catalogue and pulls records from it, including spatial layers retrieved through WMS and WFS with dplyr-style filtering translated into CQL queries sent to the server. The recent releases are small and corrective: 0.5.3 fixes malformed CQL generated by geometry predicates such as INTERSECTS, which the server had been rejecting outright, and 0.5.2 drops a leaflet extension dependency in favour of a base leaflet call. Cadence is a few releases a year.
◆ Where it's heading
Almost everything in this window is a response to something changing on the other side of the connection: a CKAN 2.9 upgrade that stopped search and listing functions returning complete results, WMS and WFS capability requests that cannot be relied on, dbplyr tightening the rules for local evaluation, and general catalogue-side churn. The package's own interface has been stable since the 0.4.0 change that required local() around locally-evaluated filter calls, and the work since has gone into keeping that stable interface working rather than extending it.
◆ Prediction
Expect the same pattern: targeted fixes as the catalogue and its CKAN, WMS and WFS layers change, with occasional dependency pruning of the kind 0.5.2 did. Nothing in these entries points toward a 0.6 or a change in what the package covers.
campsismod
2.5INFRA · APIS
The model layer under Campsis, renamed in step with it and increasingly JSON-addressable.
◆ Current state
Campsismod holds the model object layer for the Campsis pharmacometric simulation suite: reading, editing and writing model definitions that Campsis then simulates. Its recent releases track a single programme, adding a JSON route into model objects and then renaming the whole API to snake_case in 1.4.0, a week before Campsis 1.9.0 did the same. Release notes are terse issue lists, so the reasoning behind each change has to be read from the sibling package.
◆ Where it's heading
This package moves when Campsis needs it to move. The JSON constructor landed here in 1.3.0 and reached Campsis datasets a day later; parameter uncertainty generation was handed down from Campsis in that package's 1.6.0; and the snake_case migration started here before propagating up. That ordering makes Campsismod the place where suite-wide interface decisions are taken first, even though the visible payoff shows up in Campsis.
◆ Prediction
Expect Campsismod to keep absorbing model-level responsibilities that Campsis currently handles, and to extend the JSON mapping to whatever parts of the model object it does not yet cover. The entries give no signal on a 2.0, and with the rename already spent there is little reason to expect one soon.
Alternatives to bcdata and campsismod
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either bcdata or campsismod.
inlabru
A Bayesian spatial modelling package rebuilding its foundations one breaking release at a time
afcharts
UK government chart styling in ggplot2, chasing ggplot2 v4 and stretching its palette to five.
coga
A gamma-convolution density package that reached completion in 2018 and has coasted since.
smam
Animal-movement models in R, where new stochastic processes arrive years apart.
baseq
A basic DNA and RNA sequence toolkit that went quiet for three years, then jumped to 2.0.
See all bcdata alternatives → · See all campsismod alternatives →
Recent activity from bcdata and campsismod
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 21d agocampsismodsnake_case migration lands here first
- 1mo agobcdataGeometry predicate filters no longer rejected by the server
- 3mo agocampsismodBundled model suite refreshed
- 5mo agocampsismodJSON argument added to the CampsisModel constructor
- 6mo agobcdataleaflet.extras dependency dropped for WMS legends
- 7mo agocampsismodJSON import for Campsis models
- 1y agocampsismodreplaceAll fixed for unrecognised statements
- 1y agocampsismodPerformance tests skipped on CRAN
- 1y agobcdataSearch and listing functions return complete results again
- 1y agobcdataHardened against failing WMS and WFS capability requests
- 3y agobcdataJSON resources readable; organization listing helpers added
- 3y agobcdatafilter() now requires local() for locally-evaluated calls
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between bcdata and campsismod?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. campsismod is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is bcdata better than campsismod?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. campsismod is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 2.5 vs 0.0), with 0 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to bcdata?
Top bcdata alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "bcdata alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/bcdata for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to campsismod?
Top campsismod alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "campsismod alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/campsismod for the full list with editorial commentary on each.