This document specifies the set of RDF classes and properties used in the DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP).
The DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) is a specification based on the Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. Its basic use case is to enable a cross-data portal search for data sets and make public sector data better searchable across borders and sectors. This can be achieved by the exchange of descriptions of data sets among data portals.
Full documentation is provided in the
specification document
itself. This includes background information, use cases, the UML class diagram, and full definitions for all terms used.
Namespace
This application profile is derived from the Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT), with main URI:
http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#
When abbreviating terms the suggested prefix is dcat
Each class or property in the vocabulary has a URI constructed by appending a term name to the vocabulary URI. For example:
http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Catalog
UML Class Diagram
This section lists the classes, properties, and relationships contained in the application profile. The following sections indicate how these are represented in the RDF Schema.
An agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact).
Usage Note
Mandatory class. An entity that is associated with Catalogues and/or Datasets. If the Agent is an organisation, the use of the Organization Ontology is recommended.
Mandatory class. Category: a subject of a Dataset. Publisher type: A type of organisation that acts as a publisher. Status: an indication of the maturity of a Distribution.
The class rdfs:Literal is the class of literal values such as strings and integers. Property values such as textual strings are examples of RDF literals.
Usage Note
Mandatory class. A literal value such as a string or integer; Literals may be typed, e.g. as a date according to xsd:date. Literals that contain human-readable text have an optional language tag as defined by BCP 47.
All things described by RDF are called resources, and are instances of the class rdfs:Resource. This is the class of everything. All other classes are subclasses of this class. rdfs:Resource is an instance of rdfs:Class.
represents a specific available form of a dataset. Each dataset might be available in different forms, these forms might represent different formats of the dataset, different endpoints,... Examples of Distribution include a downloadable CSV file, an XLS file representing the dataset, an RSS feed…
Usage Note
Recommended class. A physical embodiment of the Dataset in a particular format.
This class is based on the UN/CEFACT Identifier complex type defined in See Section 5.8 of Core Components Data Type Catalogue Version 3.1 (http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/cefact/codesfortrade/CCTS/CCTS-DTCatalogueVersion3p1.pdf) In RDF this is expressed using the following properties: - the content string should be provided using skos:notation, datatyped with the identifier scheme (inclduing the version number if appropriate); - use dcterms:creator to link to a class describing the agency that manages the identifier scheme or adms:schemaAgency to provide the name as a literal. Although not part of the ADMS conceptual model, it may be useful to provide further properties to the Identifier class such as dcterms:created to provide the date on which the identifier was issued.
Usage Note
Optional class. An identifier in a particular context, consisting of the string that is the identifier; an optional identifier for the identifier scheme; an optional identifier for the version of the identifier scheme; an optional identifier for the agency that manages the identifier scheme
Optional class. A spatial region or named place. It can be represented using a controlled vocabulary or with geographic coordinates. In the latter case, the use of the Core Location Vocabulary is recommended.
A statement about the intellectual property rights (IPR) held in or over a resource, a legal document giving official permission to do something with a resource, or a statement about access rights.
Usage Note
Optional class. A statement about the intellectual property rights (IPR) held in or over a resource, a legal document giving official permission to do something with a resource, or a statement about access rights.
Mandatory property. This property contains a free-text account of the Catalogue. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
Recommended property. This property refers to a language used in the textual metadata describing titles, descriptions, etc. of the Datasets in the Catalogue. This property can be repeated if the metadata is provided in multiple languages.
Recommended property. The type of the latest revision of a Dataset's entry in the Catalogue. It MUST take one of the values :created, :updated or :deleted depending on whether this latest revision is a result of a creation, update or deletion.
Optional property. This property contains a free-text account of the record. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
Mandatory property. This property contains a free-text account of the Dataset. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
Optional property. This property contains the main identifier for the Dataset, e.g. the URI or other unique identifier in the context of the Catalogue.
Mandatory property. This property contains a URL that gives access to a Distribution of the Dataset. The resource at the access URL may contain information about how to get the Dataset.
Recommended property. This property contains a free-text account of the Distribution. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
Optional property. This property contains a name given to the Distribution. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the description.
Mandatory property. This property contains a name of the agent. This property can be repeated for different versions of the name (e.g. the name in different languages)
Mandatory property. This property contains a preferred label of the category. This property can be repeated for parallel language versions of the label.
