Presentation, document

What is DCAT?

The W3C Dataset Catalog vocabulary (DCAT) is designed to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs published on the Web. It is based on a generic model for catalog contents including 

• record
• description of (conceptual) entity
• related concrete artefacts

DCAT includes properties from the well known Dublin Core metadata element set, which are associated with classes for

(Original 2014 edition of DCAT)

• Catalog - a set of dataset descriptions and associated catalog records
• Record - the registration information for an item in the catalog
• Dataset - the description of a dataset, considered as a conceptual entity
• Distribution - the description of an actual representation of a dataset, e.g. a file using a specified format
  since a Dataset may be available in more than one format or representation, there is in general a 1:N relationship between Dataset and Distribution

(Upcoming 2019 extension of DCAT)

• DataService - the description of a facility for discovery, access or processing data or related resources
  • and sub-classes DataDistributionService and DiscoveryService
• catalogued Resource
  • superclass of Dataset, DataService, and potentially other things that need cataloguing

Where is it used? 

Europe - various APs, incl GeoDCAT-AP

CKAN add-on

Implementation

DCAT is formalised as an RDF vocabulary. 

• dcat: Classes + skos:Concept/ConceptScheme + foaf:Agent
• properties from dct, dcat
• new classes for Services
• new properties from PROV-O, DQV

Mix and match with any (compatible) RDF

• ORG
• SSN/SOSA
• QB
• VoID