Metadata Registry

The Metadata Registry View allows authorized users to define a system-wide catalog of known remote datasets, which are described by means of a combination of (metadata) vocabularies, including DCAT, LIME/VoID, FOAF and DCMI Metadata Terms. Additionally, the Metadata Registry uses a small RDF vocabulary to represent metadata that falls beyond the scope of the standard vocabularies that have been mentioned previously.

Metadata registry screen

The UI is mainly composed by two panels: the left panel (Dataset Catalog) lists all the datasets defined in the system, while the right one (Dataset) shows details about the selected dataset.

Two kinds of datasets can be distinguished: abstract datasets and concrete datasets. The abstract dataset is kind of like a general reference to a dataset, that gives some identity to it despite its many realizations. A concrete dataset identifies a specific version (in a broad sense) of the dataset. It could be a numeric release version (e.g. 5.2), or some particular evolving datasets, e.g. the master version of the dataset being edited on VocBench, or the LOD Dataset with its SPARQL endpoint.

The Dataset Catalog is represented as a tree. In this tree, we can have, as roots, both abstract datasets and concrete datasets. An abstract dataset is always a root while a concrete dataset is a root if it has no link to an abstract dataset. When an abstract dataset is expanded its linked concrete datasets are listed.

Metadata registry create dataset

In the Dataset Catalog panel, through the buttons at the top, it is possible to create and delete datasets. There are different ways for creating a dataset:

The Dataset panel shows details about the selected dataset and allows you to edit some of them. It allows you also to provide information about the embedded lexicalization sets. These are called embedded, because they are part of the dataset itself, differently from lexicalizations that are shipped as a third-party, autonomous dataset.

Also in this case there are two ways to define lexicalization sets:

Metadata registry lexicalizations