University of Southampton Open Data Service (Linked Data)

openapi: 3.1.0
info:
  title: University of Southampton Open Data Service (Linked Data)
  version: '1.0'
  x-generated: '2026-08-30'
  x-method: derived
  x-source: >-
    Derived from live probes of data.southampton.ac.uk and id.southampton.ac.uk on 2026-08-30.
    URI dereferencing, format-extension content negotiation and dataset dump retrieval were each
    exercised against the running service. Captured responses are held in
    examples/open-data-dcat-catalog.ttl, examples/open-data-building-94A.ttl and
    examples/open-data-building-94A.rdf. The University publishes no OpenAPI description of this
    service; this document is API Evangelist's, not the institution's.
  x-operator: institution
  x-operator-evidence: >-
    data.southampton.ac.uk is a CNAME to sni-vserver-02.soton.ac.uk (152.78.118.88) and
    id.southampton.ac.uk to websites-ecs.soton.ac.uk (152.78.118.28) — both inside the University's
    own JANET address space and its own registrable domain. The catalogue's own DCAT record names
    dcterms:publisher <http://id.southampton.ac.uk/>, typed as an aiiso:Institution labelled
    "University of Southampton". No vendor platform is involved: the FAQ states the service is built
    on Sesame, Grinder, rapper, Graphite and sparqllib, with Grinder written for this project at
    Southampton.
  description: >-
    The University of Southampton Open Data Service, one of the longest-running institutional linked
    open data programmes in higher education and a genuine outlier in this cohort: it is
    institution-built, institution-hosted and institution-maintained, with no vendor contract behind
    it. Southampton's Electronics and Computer Science school has been publishing open data about
    its own infrastructure since 2006, and this service generalised that to the whole University.

    The programmable model is linked data rather than REST. Every concept has a persistent URI under
    http://id.southampton.ac.uk/ which 303-redirects to a representation on data.southampton.ac.uk,
    and every generated page is available in machine-readable form by swapping the format extension:
    .ttl for Turtle, .rdf for RDF/XML, .nt for N-Triples, with .csv, .kml, .ics and RSS offered where
    the data suits them. Twenty-two datasets are catalogued, covering buildings and sites, term
    dates, organisational structure, research facilities, points of service, products and services,
    bus information, printers, workstation clusters and opening hours, room bookings, room features
    and shapes, and the University timetable — the campus-life and course-catalogue classes that
    universities genuinely operate and rarely publish. Each dataset offers a bulk dump at
    /dataset/{id}/latest.{ext}. Content is licensed under the Open Government Licence and the
    catalogue asserts conformance to the five-star open linked data model.

    One negative finding is material. The service formerly ran a public SPARQL endpoint at
    sparql.data.southampton.ac.uk, and the catalogue's own VoID description still advertises it as
    void:sparqlEndpoint. That endpoint has been decommissioned: every request method returns
    HTTP 200 with the body "Sorry, We no longer off a public SPARQL interface to Southampton Open
    Data". Because it answers 200 rather than an error status, automated liveness checks read it as
    healthy. It is not modelled as an operation here, and any agent following the catalogue's
    sparqlEndpoint assertion will be misled.
  contact:
    name: University of Southampton Open Data Service
    url: https://data.southampton.ac.uk/
  license:
    name: Open Government Licence
    url: http://reference.data.gov.uk/id/open-government-licence
servers:
  - url: https://data.southampton.ac.uk
    description: Representation host. id.southampton.ac.uk URIs redirect here.
tags:
  - name: Catalogue
    description: DCAT catalogue of the datasets the service publishes.
  - name: Datasets
    description: Bulk dataset dumps.
  - name: Resources
    description: Dereferenceable resource URIs for campus concepts.
paths:
  /dataset/data-catalog.ttl:
    get:
      operationId: getCatalogTurtle
      summary: Retrieve the DCAT catalogue description
      description: >-
        The catalogue's own record, as a dcat:Catalog. Verified 2026-08-30: 200,
        text/turtle, 4244 bytes. Also available as .rdf and .html.
        Beware the void:sparqlEndpoint assertion it carries — that endpoint is retired.
      tags: [ Catalogue ]
      responses:
        '200':
          description: DCAT catalogue in Turtle.
          content:
            text/turtle:
              schema:
                type: string
  /datasets.html:
    get:
      operationId: listDatasets
      summary: Human-readable index of all published datasets
      description: >-
        Verified 2026-08-30: 200, 14049 bytes, linking 22 dataset URIs under
        http://id.southampton.ac.uk/dataset/.
      tags: [ Catalogue ]
      responses:
        '200':
          description: HTML dataset index.
          content:
            text/html:
              schema:
                type: string
  /dataset/{datasetId}/latest.{format}:
    get:
      operationId: getDatasetDump
      summary: Retrieve the current bulk dump of one dataset
      description: >-
        Verified 2026-08-30 against data-catalog (200, 46377 bytes), university-timetable
        (200, 166536 bytes), printers (200, 337978 bytes) and workstation-opening
        (200, 277689 bytes). Dumps are unpaginated and some are large — bus-info was still
        streaming past 9.9 MB of a declared 21.1 MB at a 25-second timeout — so clients should
        stream rather than buffer.
      tags: [ Datasets ]
      parameters:
        - name: datasetId
          in: path
          required: true
          description: Dataset slug as listed in the catalogue.
          schema:
            type: string
            enum:
              - amenities
              - building-portals
              - bus-info
              - cls-extras
              - data-catalog
              - disabledgo
              - easting-northing
              - events-diary
              - facilities
              - markers
              - org
              - photos
              - places
              - printers
              - profile
              - room-bookings
              - room-features
              - room-shapes
              - services
              - transport-locations
              - university-timetable
              - workstation-clusters
              - workstation-opening
        - name: format
          in: path
          required: true
          description: Serialisation to return.
          schema:
            type: string
            enum: [ ttl, rdf, nt ]
      responses:
        '200':
          description: The dataset dump in the requested serialisation.
          content:
            text/turtle:
              schema:
                type: string
            application/rdf+xml:
              schema:
                type: string
        '404':
          description: >-
            No such dataset or format. Verified as a genuine 404 rather than a soft-200 —
            /dataset.html, /buildings.html and /termdates.html each returned 404 with a
            3996-byte error body on 2026-08-30.
  /building/{buildingCode}.{format}:
    get:
      operationId: getBuilding
      summary: Dereference a campus building URI
      description: >-
        Representative of the resource-dereferencing pattern that applies across the whole
        service. http://id.southampton.ac.uk/building/{code} 303-redirects here. Verified
        2026-08-30 against building 94A: .ttl returned 200 text/turtle 2329 bytes and .rdf
        returned 200 application/rdf+xml 2354 bytes, describing "Boat House 1" with WGS84
        coordinates, a building-code notation, its containing site and an accessibility guide link.
      tags: [ Resources ]
      parameters:
        - name: buildingCode
          in: path
          required: true
          description: University campus building code.
          schema:
            type: string
            examples: [ '94A' ]
        - name: format
          in: path
          required: true
          schema:
            type: string
            enum: [ ttl, rdf, nt, html ]
      responses:
        '200':
          description: RDF description of the building.
          content:
            text/turtle:
              schema:
                type: string
            application/rdf+xml:
              schema:
                type: string
        '404':
          description: No such building.