Future of oemof.tabular

[henhuy]

Hi there,

I wanted to gather some ideas/features we (Reiner Lemoine Institute) are trying to implement in oemof.tabular.
Along the SEDOS project, we decided to use oemof.tabular as underlying basis for oemof.solph. Within the project, some features are needed, which aren't covered by oemof.tabular yet and we want to add those to the codebase.
Following features are in planning:

1. Advanced postprocessing
   In my opinion, current postprocessing module in oemof.tabular.tools is more or less like a hard-coded, not very flexible implementation. More like an example on how to create/write results. My solution (there is already a PR Add postprocessing module #102) suggests a more flexible, class-based and adaptable postprocessing module, which (I hope) is useful for all oemof.tabular users. (in the next days I will write up some more documentation, tests and examples for this feature)
2. Support for oemof.solph v0.5.0
   oemof.solph version 0.5.0 is out and should be supported by oemof.tabular - there is already a PR (see Make tabular work with solph v0.5.0 #57)
3. Support for multi-period feature of oemof.solph
   We want to adapt facades and energysystem building from datapackage to support newly integrated multi-period feature from solph (see Features/multi-period oemof-solph#810 for further information)

We are very interested in your thoughts about the future of oemof.tabular and suggestions as well as feedback to out plans!

[henhuy]

Additionally to above mentioned features in the oemof.tabular package itself, there are some more developments which are based on oemof.tabular:

1. django-oemof
   Is an app for django which supports simulating oemof.tabular datapackages in the backend and storing results to a database. From there, results can be loaded into views.
2. data_adapter_oemof
   Is an adapter to download scenario data from OEP/Databus and to automatically transforming it into a oemof.tabular datapackage.