Government · head-to-head
City, Nantes Open Data vs Open Government, Belgium
Nantes Métropole's open-data portal runs OpenDataSoft; the stored record's `API Key` requirement is stale — a live keyless GET against the v2.1 Explore API (`data.nantesmetropole.fr/api/explore/v2.1/catalog/datasets`) returned full JSON catalogue metadata with a wildcard `Access-Control-Allow-Origin` header, and dataset exports in GeoJSON and CSV worked the same way with no key. An API key is only required for OpenDataSoft's write/administration endpoints, not for reading the catalogue's 590+ datasets.
Data.gov.be is Belgium's federal open-data portal, built on a custom Drupal-based platform rather than CKAN. Rather than a search REST API, it publishes its full catalogue as a DCAT-AP metadata export (RDF/XML and N-Triples) and exposes it live through a Triple Pattern Fragments / Linked Data Fragments server at `ldf.belgif.be/datagovbe`, which answers unauthenticated with a wildcard CORS header. The main site itself also sits behind bot-detection middleware that can block naive scripted fetches, but the LDF endpoint and the documented DCAT export are both reachable directly.
| City, Nantes Open Data | Open Government, Belgium | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON, CSV, GeoJSON | RDF/XML, N-Triples |
| CORS | yes | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
City, Nantes Open Data supports 3 response formats, while Open Government, Belgium offers fewer — pick City, Nantes Open Data for more integration flexibility.