Copyright © 2022
One of the targets of the Digital Single Market [[EU-DIGI-STRAT]] is to deliver cross-border and crosssector public services in Europe. Thus, in order to succeed with this objective, Member States’ base registries need to be interconnected. Base registries are trusted and reliable sources of basic information on data items such as citizens, corporations, vehicles, driver licences, buildings, and locations. They are the cornerstone of public services and essential entities for public administration management.
The interoperability of base registries is key for the development of the EU Single Digital Gateway (or just Gateway) [[SDG]], a platform that aims to be the single point of access to public EU Member States’ services, facilitating digital public services among public administrations and citizens. The implementation of the Gateway [[OOTS]] relies on the once-only principle, ensuring data that is submitted at least once to an EU Member State, could be reused by any public authority across the EU.
To interconnect European base registries it is of interest to have a European wide insight in the connection potential of these. The development of a European Registry of Base Registries (ERBR), a pan-European registry of base registries, will improve the interoperability of individual base registries and harmonise the existing registries of base registries, enabling a one-stop-platform for citizens, business and public bodies to access and manage base registries across the European Union and across different domains.
This specification, BRegDCAT-AP, facilitates the creation of ERBR. It interconnects public services with base registries and their associated services. By conforming to this specification Base Registries will becomes easier to find. And subsequently together with the provision through the Once Only Hub [[OOTS]] make them more interoperable by . This set of recommendations will enable a mechanism for the update of EU reducing technical, organisational and multilingual barriers.
This document provides the guidelines on how to use DCAT-AP to make Base Registries well documented. The document is called the "usage guidelines of DCAT-AP for Base Registries", in short BRegDCAT-AP.
To understand these guidelines, it is important to realise that the BRegDCAT-AP applies to a subset of all the datasets that are collected by (Open) Data Portals in Europe. A single catalogue may contain catalogued resources which are within and outside scope of BRegDCAT-AP.
This application profile has the status Working Draft published at 2023-09-04.
Information about the process and the decisions involved in the creation of this specification are consultable at the Changelog.
Copyright © 2023 European Union. All material in this repository is published under the license CC-BY 4.0, unless explicitly otherwise mentioned.
An Application Profile is a specification that reuses terms from one or more base standards, adding more specificity by identifying mandatory, recommended and optional elements to be used for a particular application, as well as recommendations for controlled vocabularies to be used.
An Annex to an Application Profile is a specification that precises the use of some aspects of the Application Profile for a specific context.
A Base Registry is a web-based system that contains an inventory of descriptions of Master datasets and provides services enabling discovery and re-use of the datasets. The mandate of a Base Registry is given by specific legislation.
At EU level, National Registers aggregate information about Base Registries in Registries of Base Registries. A Registry of Base Registries is considered as a Catalogue of collections of metadata about datasets or data services.
This specification uses the following prefixes to shorten the URIs for readibility.Prefix | Namespace IRI |
---|---|
adms | http://www.w3.org/ns/adms# |
cpsv | http://purl.org/vocab/cpsv# |
dcat | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat# |
dcatap | http://data.europa.eu/r5r/ |
dct | http://purl.org/dc/terms/ |
dctype | http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/ |
eli | http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology# |
foaf | http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/ |
locn | http://www.w3.org/ns/locn# |
owl | http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl# |
rdf | http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# |
rdfs | http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema# |
skos | http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core# |
vcard | http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns# |
xsd | http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema# |
BRegDCAT-AP is an annex to DCAT-AP. It describes additional usage of the DCAT-AP for Base Registries. In this document only the additional information, that is required for the catalogued resources which are within scope of the regulation, is included. In any other case, the guidelines of DCAT-AP itself are applicable.
As shown in the profile diagram below: the sole addition to DCAT-AP is the relationship with a public service. As such the Annex can be even further reduced to a simple case of relating a public service with a catalogued resource.
An overview of BRegDCAT-AP is shown by the UML diagram below. The UML diagram illustrates the specification described in this document. For readability purposes the representation has been condensed as follows:
For readibility of this document as an annex to DCAT-AP, the core relationships between classes are included.
This document describes the usage of the following main entities for a correct usage of the Application Profile:
|
Catalogue |
Catalogue Record |
Catalogued Resource |
Data Service |
Dataset |
Distribution |
Public Registry Service |
The main entities are supported by:
|
Concept |
Legal Resource |
Literal |
Resource |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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dataset | Dataset | 0..* | A Dataset that is part of the Catalogue. | As empty Catalogues are usually indications of problems, this property should be combined with the next property service to implement an empty Catalogue check. | Link |
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record | Catalogue Record | 0..* | A Catalogue Record that is part of the Catalogue. | Link | |
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service | Data Service | 0..* | A site or end-point (Data Service) that is listed in the Catalogue. | As empty Catalogues are usually indications of problems, this property should be combined with the previous property dataset to implement an empty Catalogue check. | Link |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
primary topic | Catalogued Resource | 1 | A link to the Dataset, Data service or Catalog described in the record. | A catalogue record will refer to one entity in a catalogue. This can be either a Dataset or a Data Service. To ensure an unambigous reading of the cardinality the range is set to Catalogued Resource. However it is not the intend with this range to require the explicit use of the class Catalogued Record. As abstract class, an subclass should be used. | Link |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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serves dataset | Dataset | 0..* | This property refers to a collection of data that this data service can distribute. | Link |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
dataset distribution | Distribution | 0..* | An available Distribution for the Dataset. | Link |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
access service | Data Service | 0..* | A data service that gives access to the distribution of the dataset. | Link |
Property | Range | Card | Definition | Usage | DCAT | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
![]() |
produces | Catalogued Resource | 0..* | This property defines the output of the service as a data resource available and managed by a Base Registry Service. | The output must be also described as a dcat:Catalog, a dcat:Dataset or a dcat:DataService. |
Class | Class IRI | Property Type | Property | Property IRI |
---|---|---|---|---|
Catalogue | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Catalog |
Recommended | dataset | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#dataset |
Catalogue | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Catalog |
Recommended | service | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#service |
Catalogue | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Catalog |
Optional | record | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#record |
Catalogue Record | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#CatalogRecord |
Mandatory | primary topic | http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/primaryTopic |
Catalogued Resource | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Resource |
|||
Concept | http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#Concept |
|||
Data Service | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#DataService |
Recommended | serves dataset | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#servesDataset |
Dataset | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Dataset |
Recommended | dataset distribution | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#distribution |
Distribution | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#Distribution |
Optional | access service | http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#accessService |
Legal Resource | http://data.europa.eu/eli/ontology#LegalResource |
|||
Literal | http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Literal |
|||
Public Registry Service | http://purl.org/vocab/cpsv#PublicService |
Optional | produces | http://purl.org/vocab/cpsv#produces |
Resource | http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Resource |