Inspect a registry before integrating
Use this pattern when a team has been handed a published metadata URL and must assess feasibility before requesting integration access or signing a data sharing agreement.
Starting situation
Section titled “Starting situation”A national education ministry publishes a school registry covering 12,000 institutions. Three separate systems want to integrate: a student-loan disbursement platform, a teacher certification authority, and a statistics bureau. Each team has been given a metadata URL and told to assess feasibility before any data sharing agreement is signed. They need to know what the metadata describes, where the gaps are, and which route matches their information need.
What you set up
Section titled “What you set up”Ensure the registry has published metadata: a DCAT catalog from Registry Manifest, a Relay runtime metadata endpoint, or both. The metadata bundle should include a dataset description, a data-service entry, a JSON Schema, an SHACL shape, and links to any evidence or requirement documents.
Point Registry Atlas at the metadata URL. Atlas reads the published artifacts, follows linked documents, classifies discovered assets, and produces an inspection report.
No record-level access is required for the inspection.
What a caller does
Section titled “What a caller does”The integration team runs Atlas against the published metadata URL.
Atlas traverses the catalog, schema, shape, policy, and service documents. It classifies what it can recognize, flags missing or ambiguous artifacts, and maps candidate routes to the information needs the team has described.
The team reviews the Atlas report to confirm whether the published metadata is sufficient to plan an integration, or whether they need to ask the registry operator to fill gaps before proceeding.
What the caller gets back
Section titled “What the caller gets back”An inspection report listing: the catalog entries and datasets visible through metadata, the schema and SHACL artifacts linked from those assets, the policies and evidence offerings discoverable from the service description, candidate routes for each information need with gap notes, and a list of missing or ambiguous metadata items that need human review.
A candidate route in the report is evidence for integration planning. It is not a production approval or authorization.
What Atlas reports reflects what the published artifacts say, not what the source registry actually contains; the report does not prove that the registry will return production data for a caller.