Give support to OGC API Records metadata format in layer metadata

[doublebyte1]

Feature description

It will be really nice to support the record format from the OGC API Records standards candidate in QGIS, and allow users to read and write layer metadata using this format. This would make QGIS one of the few available tools to author metadata for OGC API Records. An example of a record encoded in this format, can be found here.

• One option could be to add a translator class, from the current QgsProjectMetadata class, which would be called when serializing/deserializing information.
• Another option could be to replace the current format for the OGC API records format.

In addition to load and save metadata files, maybe one day in the future QGIS could even publish/edit metadata directly in a OGC API Records server,

Additional context

The QGIS metadata internal format is based on Dublin Core. It was developed with the goal of creating something simple (standards based), that could be extended in the future. At that time, OGC APi Records did not exist yet. OGC API defines a record building block which attains the same goals of the QGIS metadata schema: being very simple and extensive. Unlike Dublin Core, which is a generic metadata schema, the OGC API Records schema was designed for geospatial data and it will be at the core of the modern generation geospatial catalogs.

[doublebyte1]

@tomkralidis @mbernasocchi @m-kuhn @timlinux @pascallike what do you think?

[tomkralidis]

cc @kalxas

+1 for this feature in experimental mode, given the record building block is in development.

[m-kuhn]

Compatibility with OGC API records sounds desirable to me. It would be good to have a comparison of the compatibility level (additions, removals, conflicts) as a first step.

[doublebyte1]

@m-kuhn @tomkralidis maybe we can have a chat about this, during the code sprint!

[elpaso]

A few links to the current metadata provider API: https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/250 https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/pull/50015