Feature Type Catalogs

Building Blocks solve a key limitation of traditional specifications using mixtures of documentation styles and locations - by normalising the documentation for a wide range of specification types it allows for increased Access in practice - since all the reusable components can be reliably found via the underlying Linked Data and Register models.

The concept of a “Feature Type Catalog” (FTC) has been widely accepted as a concept, however interoperable implementations have been slow to emerge.

This may be because FTCs in practice need to be technically aligned with the underlying infrastructure publishing Features as data, and this in turn has two distinct aspects: persistence (how features are stored) and transfer (how they are exposed). Both of these aspects tend to be technology dependent, and hence expression of Feature Types is often tied to one or other of such aspects.

Building Blocks provide a new opportunity to publish Feature Types in a technology agnostic way, using multiple schemas mapped to common semantic models, supported by examples and validation.

Effectively this means the design pattern of a schema mapped to a Class with a Frame (a set of properties). Building Blocks can handle abstract or conceptual models, or technology specific physical implementation schemas, and crucially and uniquely the relationships between concepts and implementation options.