What DCAT-AP extension to use for CKAN vs native support (per website)

CKAN states that it is DCAT compliant, see http://ckan.org/open-standards/ (“CKAN includes native exporting of records in DCAT format, and can harvest DCAT records from other catalogues.”).

Can you provide more information about this feature? As far as we know at the Flemish Government, we need to use an extension like ckanext-DCAT to use this feature. We also do not understand why the European Data portal has created its own extension ckanext-edp.

So, our questions are:

  • will / does CKAN offer native support for DCAT-AP 1.1 import and export?
    If so, can you please forward the link to the relevant documentation?
    if not, what is your advise in terms of extensions? ckanext-DCAT or ckanext-edp or another?
  • What is the plan going forward with CKAN to support DCAT? Is this on the roadmap?

Tx,

Yves (FG Open Data Team)

1 Like

@yvesvanderbeken DCAT support in CKAN is indeed powered by ckanext-dcat (the word “native” on the website is a bit misleading). The DCAT support for this extensionhas been designed to be site independent and customizable, so you can adapt the profiles to your site implementation.

The current version of ckanext-dcat is stable and production ready (although of course there are outstanding issues). AFAIK there are no immediate plans for funded work on it but of course we welcome contributions from the community.

I can’t really speak for ckanext-edp but I guess they felt that ckanext-dcat didn’t offer the features they needed.

Hope this helps

Hi,

Thanks for you answer, this is clear. At the Flemish Government, we are looking to standardize on DCAT-AP for all incoming and outgoing interfaces, can we then still use the ckanext-dcat or do you know of a list of incompabilities with DCAT-AP that are not supported by the extension?

Thx,

Yves
FG Open Data Team

@yvesvanderbeken My understanding is that currently ckanext-dcat supports all the DCAT-AP 1.1 spec but please flag any inconsistency that you find

Hi,

Well there is, be it in the optional fields. The following fields have been added to CKAN-AP, so I wonder if the ckanext-dcat supports them:

Dataset – optional fields

Property

URI

Range

Access rights

dct:accessRights

Dct:RightsStatement

Conforms to

dct:conformsTo

dct:Standard

Documentation

foaf:page

foaf:Document

Has version

dct:HasVersion

dcat:Dataset

Is version of

dct:IsVersionOf

Dcat:Dataset

Other identifier

adms:identifier

adms:Identifier

Provenance

dct:provenance

dct:ProvenanceStatement

Related resource

dct:relation

dct:relation

teTime

Sample

adms:sample

dcat:Distribution

Source

dct:source

dcat:Dataset

Version

schema:version

rdfs:Literal

Version notes

adms:version- Notes

rdfs:Literal

Distribution – optional fields

Property

URI

Range

Documentation

Foaf:page

foaf:Document

Language

dct:language

dct:LinguisticSystem

Linked Schema’s

dct:conformsTo

dct:Standard

Status

adms:status

skos:Concept

Thanks for commenting,

Yves

Hi,

Sorry, I had a deeper look at the mapping table at GitHub - ckan/ckanext-dcat: CKAN ♥ DCAT and they are all mapped to extra fields in CKAN, so we can proceed.

Tx,

Yves

Yes, was just going to link to the mapping but you find it already :slight_smile:

Do share your experiences and report any issues you find with ckanext-dcat!

Adrià

I have a similar kind of problem. My university is storing the sensor data in SQL database and they want to publish the data stored in SQL on CKAN.

According to my research, I think we can create a data catalog from sql database and host on web and then provide that URL during harvesting and select source type as DCAT rdf harvester. I am not completely sure about this.

Can you please guide me how to live feed sql database on CKAN. I m really stuck with this point. Your advice would be very helpful

Thanks,
Tanya