Explanation of the data concepts

Dataset description

When the dataset description is retrieved and validated at source, it is stored in its own graph based on dcat:Dataset. The URL of the graph corresponds to the IRI of the dataset.

Dataset descriptions provided from schema.org - as advised in the Requirements for Datasets - are converted to DCAT.

The table below shows the properties that can appear in a dataset description:

Property	Description	Based on
dct:title	Dataset title.	schema:name
dct:alternative	Dataset alternate title.	schema:alternateName
dct:identifier	Dataset identifier.	schema:identifier
dct:description	Dataset description.	schema:description
dct:license	Dataset license.	schema:license
dct:language	Language(s) in which the dataset is available.	schema:inLanguage
dcat:keyword	Keywords or tags that describe the dataset.	schema:keywords
dcat:landingPage	Keywords or tags that describe the dataset.	schema:mainEntityOfPage
dct:source	URL(s) of datasets the dataset is Gebaseerd op.	schema:isBasedOn
dct:created	Dataset creation date.	schema:dateCreated
dct:issued	Dataset publication date.	schema:datePublished
dct:modified	Dataset last modification date.	schema:dateModified
owl:versionInfo	Dataset version	schema:version
dct:creator	Dataset creator.	schema:creator
dct:publisher	Dataset publisher.	schema:publisher
dcat:distribution	Dataset distributions.	schema:distribution
dct:isPartOf	Data Catalog the dataset is part of.	schema:includedInDataCatalog

Organisations

Each dataset description has a dct:publisher and optionally also one or more dct:creators. A dct:publisher is the organization who publishes the dataset. A dct:creator is the organization that (originally) created the dataset.

Organizations have as type foaf:Organization and in addition to an IRI also the following properties:

Property	Description	Based on
foaf:name	Organization name.	schema:name

Distributions

A dataset description can contain one or more distributions. A distribution specifies how the dataset can be retrieved (if it is a file/data dump) or queried (if it is on an API, such as OAI-PMH, SPARQL, etc.).

The table below lists the properties that can occur in a distribution:

Property	Description	Based on
dcat:accessUrl	Distribution URL.	schema:contentUrl
dcat:mediaType	Distribution’s IANA media type.	schema:fileFormat
dct:format	Distribution content type (e.g. text/turtle).	schema:encodingFormat
dct:issued	Distribution publication date.	schema:datePublished
dct:modified	Distribution last modification date.	schema:dateModified
dct:description	Distribution description.	schema:description
dct:language	Distribution language.	schema:inLanguage
dct:license	Distribution license.	schema:license
dct:title	Distribution title.	schema:name
dcat:byteSize	Distribution’s download size in bytes.	schema:contentSize