The Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT) is an RDF vocabulary designed to facilitate interoperability between data catalogs published on the Web. This document defines the schema and provides examples for its use. By using DCAT to describe datasets in data catalogs, publishers increase discoverability and enable applications easily to consume metadata from multiple catalogs. It further enables decentralized publishing of catalogs and facilitates federated dataset search across sites. Aggregated DCAT metadata can serve as a manifest file to facilitate digital preservation. The standard was first developed and published by DERI and saw adoption by a number of organizations. The standard was further devoped by the W3C eGov Interest Group with additional work being done by the W3c Government Linked Data (GLD) Working Group. This revised version of DCAT was developed by the Dataset Exchange Working Group in response to a new set of Use Cases and Requirements [DCAT-UCR] gathered from peoples’ experience with the DCAT vocabulary from the time of the original version, and new applications that were not considered in the first version. A summary of the changes from [VOCAB-DCAT-20140116] is provided in § D. Change history.
