This page describes version 1.2 of the DCAT-AP, which is the latest release of the DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP).

What’s new?

The changes implemented in DCAT-AP version 1.2 are related to the comments provided in this issue from GitHub.

1. Changed cardinality for the Licence Document class – Licence type property (dct:type) from 0… 1 to 0…n, and, as a result, this property can be repeated in the case that multiple licence types apply to a licence document. The UML schema, RDF and SCHACL distributions were updated accordingly.
2. UML schema updated with all the cardinalities described in the specification documentation for easier access to the information.
3. Editorial fix on page 26 of the DCAT-AP v1.2 published documentation (.DOC, .PDF and .ODT formats) where LicenceDocument dct:type property was represented as a mandatory property instead of a recommended property.

In September 2018, the ISA2 Programme of the European Commission started the minor release cycle for DCAT-AP aiming to address requests for change received by users through the GitHub repository. DCAT-AP Working Group members and users were invited to share their comments by the 26th of October 2018. Find more about the process here.

About DCAT-AP

The DCAT Application profile for data portals in Europe (DCAT-AP) is a specification based on W3C's Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT) for describing public sector datasets in Europe. Its basic use case is to enable a cross-data portal search for datasets and make public sector data better searchable across borders and sectors. This can be achieved by the exchange of descriptions of data sets among data portals.

The specification of the DCAT-AP was a joint initiative of DG CONNECT, the EU Publications Office and the ISA Programme. The specification was elaborated by a multi-disciplinary Working Group with representatives from 16 European Member States, some European Institutions and the US.