VocBench 3 as a CMS for a metadata catalog?
Geodatenm...@bgr.de
Dear VocBench Users,
a colleague of mine recommended me VocBench as a content management system for maintaining a data catalog with records described by properties from esp. the DCAT vocabulary. It comprises a number of metadata descriptions for geographical applications, data, and services. Up to now, I could not find any evidence on this.
On its homepage VocBench is introduced as a web-based, multilingual, collaborative development platform for managing OWL ontologies, SKOS(/XL) thesauri, Ontolex-lemon lexicons and generic RDF datasets. So would it be possible from your point of view to manage this kind of instance data with VocBench?
Best regards,
Andreas Pasewaldt
Armando Stellato
Dear Andreas,
there is a number of solutions for your scenario (and more will be coming in the future, as this is a growing aspect in VocBench and in ShowVoc).
By first, it’s good to assess better your needs:
1st general question would be: what do you expect from your metadata catalog?
More specifically, a few questions:
- Since you mentioned DCAT, I’m assuming you are representing metadata about some datasets, am I right? I guess I’m right as you wrote “data catalog” in the msg, but the subject mentions metadata catalog
- What are the kind of entities described by the metadata catalog? As you probably know, DCAT can be used to describe any kind of data asset, not necessarily RDF datasets.
- In case of RDF datasets, you just want to collect their metadata (so with DCAT and possibly other vocabularies) or even the dataset themselves? Do you want them to be browsable?
In giving you this first answer, I’m assuming the scenario of a metadata catalog for RDF datasets and I’ll consider two scenarios: 1) you only want the metadata 2) you want the metadata about the datasets…and to host the datasets
Concerning point 1, VocBench, among other things, allows for data management with respect to any vocabulary (or set of vocabularies), which can be owl:imported. Indeed, being also an ontology editor, you can also define your vocabulary first (and/or extending existing ones, so let’s say, more in general, define your ABOX) and then use it for modeling the data. In practice, you are having a single project, using DCAT and other vocabularies, where your data is actually the metadata catalog.
A few features can be handy:
Pls notice that there is a new option now for importing ontologies from another project:
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/namespaces_imports.jsf#imports
so, say you are editing the vocabulary in project V and the data in project D, you can now say, in D, that you import your vocabularies from project V. This will allow you to update the imported vocabulary in D each time you want, following the changes you apply to it in project V
Also, you can use custom forms, preparing specific forms for creating the entities of DCAT (e.g. dcat:Dataset) in a convenient way
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/custom_forms.jsf
and then…there are all the other editing features of VB…
The other scenario (scenario 2) is that you want to setup a dataset catalog, with the possibility to browse the datasets, and also provide their metadata.
Now, by first, it is worth mentioning that both VocBench and ShowVoc, since a few years, feature a component called “Metadata Registry”:
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/mdr.jsf
which is meant to hold the metadata of all of their hosted datasets…and of known datasets on the Web. The MDR was actually born specifically for the latter, allowing VB to resolve URIs from external resources hosted on the web (i.e linked open datasets).
The MDR can be edited, but it’s also smart in resolving things automatically, by following publication best practices…and its nose. Try, for instance, the “discover dataset” functionality described in the aforementioned MDR page
The MDR uses a combination of different vocabularies, mainly: DCAT-3, VoID (which still provides more specific properties for RDF datasets, but it’s interwoven with DCAT in our application profile) and LIME (for lexical metadata). See references: [1,2,3]
The MDR is part of VocBench and SHowVoc but it’s developed as a separated component, so it can be embedded in other tools. In VB and SV it is realized as a separated module, which is also an OSGi bundle. This is obviously in case you are considering building your own and reuse convenient software, which is probably not the case, but I just thought it worth to mention all possibilities.
Other features provide useful functionalities for metadata about the hosted datasets. For instance, you can use this one:
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/metadata_vocabularies.jsf
for exporting metadata about each dataset managed in its own project. This can come handy if you have a specific need (e.g. I want to just publish the VoID/LIME descriptor, without DCAT, or I need to use the DCAT-AP application profile for the P.A sector in Europe, or the ADMS vocabulary,etc..). It’s an extension point, so if you have created your own metadata vocabulòary (or set of vocabularies) you can define a new exporter and plug it to VocBench. Please notice that, in order to avoid redundancy and spare your time, some fields are bound to values of properties (which are supposed to have the same semantics) in the MDR, so it will (allow you to, it’s not mandatory) reuse info that is already in the MDR and the let you add other info which is specific to the vocabularies you are adopting.
And, finally, if you want the full package for hosting a dataset portal that provides both UI and machine access (Web API) to the datasets and to their metadata (and also metadata about external datasets), ShowVoc is the solution for you: https://showvoc.uniroma2.it/
Please notice that several kind of interactions are possible between VB and ShowVoc:
1. Access SV from VB as a dataset catalog:
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/dataset_catalogs.jsf
2. deploy from VB to SV
https://vocbench.uniroma2.it/doc/user/global_data_management.jsf#export_data
3. define in SV a VB instance available for users willing to contribute new datasets (the option can be deactivated)
https://showvoc.uniroma2.it/doc/user/contributions_submission.jsf
Kind Regards,
Armando
[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat-3/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vocbench-user" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to
vocbench-use...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vocbench-user/991292e2-69de-434e-b787-4db61302f671n%40googlegroups.com.
Roland Wingerter
https://op.europa.eu/de/web/eu-vocabularies/showvoc
Geodatenm...@bgr.de
Dear Armando,
thank you for your answer and your hints and tips for working with VocBench 3 and ShowVoc.
That was exactly was I needed to start studying the comprehensive manuals and tutorials.
The use case can be specified as follows: A colleague of mine is maintaining a metadata catalog about geo-data sets and services based on ISO standards (ISO 19115, 19119, and 19139) and INSPIRE technical guidelines. So far, both are non-RDF data. In her current metadata editor she is describing the data sets and services using a fixed set of XML elements and attributes. Since recently, she has to consider new requirements like data versioning or preservation of identifiers and new attributes like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) or ORCID-IDs. This is why she wants to experiment with RDF vocabularies (esp. DCAT, DCAT-AP, and GeoDCAT-AP) and application profiles by adding custom properties.
Against this background your links are pointing into the right direction. Besides, it is also good know that the resulting metadata catalog could be finally presented using the ShowVoc software. Thank you.
Best regards,
Andreas
Armando Stellato
Dear Andreas,
thanks for filling me in on the proper scenario :-)
yes, given what you described (the datasets are not even in RDF) yes, surely the best hypothesis is just to have one project in VB3 where you import the proper ontologies she wants to use (like those you mentioned) and then manage the data about the various resources. Even though I introduced ShowVoc as a possibility in case your colleague wanted to also expose the datasets, it can be used, like you said, for showing that single dataset of all metadata created by her
Kind Regards,
Armando
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vocbench-user/cbe44a44-4bb4-4b3c-958e-5123e62a908an%40googlegroups.com.