DCAT, DCAT-AP

DCAT (Data Catalogue Vocabulary) is a standard developed by the W3C organization to describe datasets in data catalogs so that publishers can increase the discoverability and enable applications to consume metadata from multiple catalogs. It further enables decentralized publishing of catalogs and facilitates federated dataset search across sites. DCAT-AP (Application Profile) extends this standard so that it helps in meeting the needs of data portals in Europe while providing semantic interoperability (the ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning) with other applications.