Presentation delivered at the Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group -- Research Data Alliance (RDA) 4th Plenary Meeting -- Amsterdam, September 2014

1. Research Data Alliance 4th Plenary Meeting
22-24 September 2014, Amsterdam
Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group
The CIARD RING
a global directory of datasets for agriculture
Valeria Pesce
Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
agINFRA project
EC 7th framework program INFRA-2011-1.2.2 - Grant agr. no: 283770

2. The CIARD RING
The CIARD RING is
a global directory of web-based information
services and datasets for agriculture
http://ring.ciard.net
The CIARD RING is a project implemented within the
CIARD initiative and is led by the Global Forum on
Agricultural Research (GFAR).

3. Why (1)
- Producers and managers of information /
data need a place where their information
products can be found
- Data consumers need to find suitable data
sources
- IT professionals need information on the level
and mode of interoperability of information
services and datasets for using data in their
applications

4. Numbers and map
• 468 data providers
• 1018 information services, of which
– 268 exposed datasets

5. Definition of “dataset” in the RING
The term “datasets” has been defined in several ways, all of which
further specify or extend the basic concept of “a collection of data”.
Definition given by the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group:
A dataset is “a collection of data, published or curated by a
single source, and available for access or download in one or
more formats”
The “instances” of the dataset “available for access or
download in one or more formats” are called
“distributions”. A dataset can have many distributions.
Examples of distributions include a downloadable CSV
file, an API or an RSS feed.

6. Direct submission + federation
• All datasets currently featured in the RING have
been manually submitted by their owners /
managers
• BUT, We don’t want to force data owners who already have a
dataset catalog to catalog and maintain their datasets in two
places
 We are working on procedures to federate
datasets from the most used dataset cataloguing
platforms (Dataverse, CKAN…)
First experiment started with the IFPRI Dataverse
dataset catalog

7. The RING user interface

8. Dataset record

9. The RING machine interface – Why (2)
• Datasets registered in the RING have to be found by
applications
• Applications have to be able to read all the metadata about
datasets and filter datasets according to their needs
• Applications have to find enough technical metadata in the
RING to:
– Identify datasets with a specific coverage (type of data, thematic
coverage, geographic coverage)
– Identify datasets that comply with certain technical specifications
(format, protocol etc.)
– Access the dataset and get the data
 This machine-readable layer can support the data
aggregation workflows of external services

10. The RING machine interface – SPARQL
The RING database is also an accessible RDF store.
SPARQL endpoint
http://ring.ciard.net/sparql1
An RDF store is a way of storing data using a machine-readable
"grammar" (the Resource Description Framework)
and documented semantics (RDF vocabularies).
URIs
The URI for each service / dataset is built as follows:
RING-domain/node/service-ID.
For example: http://ring.ciard.net/node/2417

11. SPARQL how to: vocabularies
The vocabularies used in the RDF store are:
• RDF: http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#
• RDFS: http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#
• DC: http://purl.org/dc/terms/
• DCAT: http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#
• ADMS: http://www.w3.org/ns/adms#
• FOAF: http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/
• DOAP: http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#
• SKOS: http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#
• VCARD: http://www.w3.org/2006/vcard/ns#
The data model chosen to describe datasets is the
W3C Data Catalog Vocabulary (DCAT)
designed to describe datasets
and the forms in which they are exposed, their "distributions"

12. SPARQL how to: sample query
To get all datasets available through the OAI-PMH protocol
Query:
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX
rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> PREFIX dc:
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/> PREFIX dcat:
<http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#> PREFIX adms:
<http://www.w3.org/ns/adms#> PREFIX doap:
<http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#> PREFIX skos:
<http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
DESCRIBE ?dataset ?distro ?owner ?contact ?topic ?standard ?format
?protocol
WHERE { ?dataset rdf:type dcat:Dataset . ?dataset dc:title ?title .
?dataset dcat:distribution ?distro . ?dataset dc:publisher ?owner .
?distro dcat:accessURL ?url . ?distro adms:representationTechnique
<http://ring.ciard.net/taxonomy_term/108> . OPTIONAL {
?dataset doap:maintainer ?contact } OPTIONAL { ?dataset dcat:theme
?topic } OPTIONAL { ?distro dc:conformsTo ?standard } OPTIONAL {
?distro dc:format ?format } OPTIONAL { ?distro
adms:representationTechnique ?protocol } }

13. SPARQL how to: URIs?
All the URIs that you may need in queries are
listed on the RING web site
• A list of the URIs of all the RING
entities (services/datasets, organizations,
KOSs etc.)
• A list of the URIs of all RING
concepts (countries, topics, regions, protocols
etc.)

14. SPARQL how to: URIs of entities

15. SPARQL how to: exploit linked URIs

16. Example of use: AGRIS  RING
1. How AGRIS uses the RING Linked Data
AGRIS (http://agris.fao.org): database of more than 7
million bibliographic references on agricultural research
and technology and links to related data resources on
the Web.
AGRIS retrieves information on AGRIS centers through a
SPARQL query run against the RING.
<http://ring.ciard.net/node/10687> is the uRI of the
AGRIS network in the RING
------------------------------
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> PREFIX dc:
<http://purl.org/dc/terms/> PREFIX dcat: <http://www.w3.org/ns/dcat#> DESCRIBE
?dataset WHERE { ?dataset rdf:type dcat:Dataset . ?dataset dc:partOf
<http://ring.ciard.net/node/10687> }
------------------------------

17. Example of use: AGRIS  RING
2. How to get AGRIS Linked Data bibliographic records for each AGRIS
center
In the AGRIS RDF store, all bibliographic records are
associated to the corresponding AGRIS center through
the dcterms:source property: the URI used to identify
the AGRIS center is the RING URI.
Any application can therefore retrieve all records
belonging to an AGRIS center by running a query
against the AGRIS SPARQL endpoint
(http://202.45.139.84:10035/catalogs/fao/repositories
/agris).
------------------------------------
PREFIX dcterms: <http://purl.org/terms> DESCRIBE ?rec WHERE { ?rec dcterms:source
<http://ring.ciard.net/node/2754> . }
-----------------------------------

18. Interoperability assessment in the RING
The technical metadata registered in the RING for
each dataset provide enough information to give a
good idea of the level of “interoperability” of that
dataset.
“Interoperability is a feature of datasets— and of information
services that give access to datasets— whereby data can easily
be retrieved, processed, re-used, and re-packaged (“operated”)
by other systems. The less pre-coordination required to achieve
this, the more “interoperable” the dataset.”
[from: Interim Proceedings of International Expert Consultation
on “Building the CIARD Framework for Data and Information
Sharing”, Beijing 20-23 June 2011. 2011.]

19. Metadata Type Interoperability points Tim Berner Lee’s stars
For the service/dataset in general
1 Global coverage Select list 4 if not empty
2 Regional coverage (FAO) Select list 4 if not empty
3 Regional coverage (GFAR) Select list 4 if not empty
4 National coverage Select list 4 if not empty
5 Specific topic (AGROVOC) Autocomplete multiple
(authority: AGROVOC)
8 if not empty
6 Type of content/data managed Autocomplete multiple 4 if not empty
7 KOSs used Select list multiple
(authority: VEST Registry)
10 for each KOS used 5 IF you already have 4
8 Special instructions for getting
data from this service
Text 3 if not empty
9 Examples Text multiple 2 for each example
For each distribution of the
dataset
10 URL / target / endpoint Text 30 if not empty 1
11 File upload Upload 10 if not empty 1
12 Access / licensing Autocomplete 4 if half-open; 6 if free / open; 8 if
formally open (OA, CC)
0.5 if half-open; 1 if open; 1.5 if
open and known license e.g. CC
13 License URL Text: URL 7 if not empty 0.5
14 Protocol Select list 10 ftp/download; 20 OAI-PMH or
web service; 30 if SPARQL
1 if ftp/download; 3 if OAI-PMH or
RSS; 4 if SPARQL
15 Format / serialization / notation Select list
(authority: subset of IANA
types)
5 Excel; 10 CSV, XML; 12 JSON; 15
RDFXML; 20 JsonLD, ntriples-n3-
turtle)
2 if Excel; 3 if CSV, XML, JSON; 4 if
JsonLD, RDFXML, ntriples-n3-turtle
16 Metadata set(s) used Select list
(authority: VEST Registry)
6 for each metadata set 2.5
17 Does the dataset use URIs? Yes/No 20 if yes; OR: multiply 15 by n. 10 4 (OR: 4 IF you already have 3)
18 Does the dataset link to external Yes/No 20 if yes; OR: multiply 15 by n. 15 5 (OR: 5 IF you already have 3)

21. Thank you
Thank you for your attention
Valeria Pesce
valeria.pesce@fao.org