All, if you work with access to datasets, you should take a look at the
draft of the W3C DCAT vocabulary that is now available for comment. This
arises primarily out of the European Union's open government data
efforts, but as it is being closely monitored by Google as a way to
provide search and access to datasets online it may well become key to
the findability of all types of datasets on the net.

If your institution is a W3C member this is especially important for you.

kc


Dear Colleague

This mail is to update you on the work of the W3C Data Exchange Working
Group [1] and to ask for your help in reviewing progress on the revision
of the RDF vocabulary for data catalogues, DCAT, that was published on 8
May 2018. The First Public Working Draft of the revision is available at
https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat-2/

The revision of DCAT is part of a group of 3 deliverables described in
the Charter [2], but it is able to stand up by itself as an update to
the recommended way in which data catalogues should be published on the web.

The main ways in which this first draft revision differs from the
current recommendation include:

* more relaxed axiomatisation that gives greater flexibility to the
domain and range Classes of several predicates
*an expectation for a more modular approach to ontology development that
defines a core and provides scope for other optional components through
import

In addition, among other things, we are working on:

*extending the scope of DCAT to include data services and data
distribution services as well as datasets as members of a catalog
*ways of dealing with related datasets (including sub-datasets)
*representing dataset quality

In reviewing the draft it might be helpful for you to keep in mind the
“Use Cases and Requirements” document that we are working to [3].

We would find it helpful to get feedback on the following lines:

1. Do you agree with the direction of travel of this revision of DCAT?
2. Are there any areas where we could improve what we have done? [please
illustrate]
3. Are there any areas where you think the proposal is wrong or could
lead us into developing proposals that are erroneous? [please give
examples and reasons]
4. Are there other use cases for data catalogues and datasets
descriptions that we have not considered [please illustrate]

Please also feel free to make any other comments and suggestions
regarding the draft.

Please, send comments through GitHub issues
(https://github.com/w3c/dxwg/issues) or through email at
[log in to unmask]


[1] https://www.w3.org/2017/dxwg/wiki/Main_Page

[2] https://www.w3.org/2017/dxwg/charter

[3] https://www.w3.org/TR/dcat-ucr/

-- 
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600