Dataspaces and the Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC)
A dataspace is both a multi-organizational agreement and a supporting technical infrastructure that enables data sharing between two or more participants. Participants in a dataspace can have a variety of pre-existing levels of trust. Some might have a previous relationship and trust each other, while others might not have any relationship at all and be untrusted entities. Dataspaces even enable data sharing among direct competitors. It provides answers for technology challenges of data sharing:
- How do I find data?
- How do I publish my data in a secure way?
- How do I share my data in a multi-cloud environment
- How do I maintain control over my dta once it has been shared?
Since the concept of dataspaces is emerging and promise new capabilities to the data exchange between dataspaces' participants in terms of data sovereignty, we need technical components that implement the concepts.
The Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) is a comprehensive framework (concept, architecture, code, samples) providing a basic set of features (functional and non-functional) that dataspace implementations can re-use and customize by leveraging the framework’s defined APIs and ensure interoperability by design. It is powered by the specifications of the Gaia-X AISBL Trust Framework and the IDSA Dataspace protocol.
The EDC is designed for developers who want to build dataspace implementations on an existing, standards-based framework and adopt and adapt it with their own solutions: Developers use the EDC to build data-sharing services for their customers.
The framework consists of a set of components and corresponding capabilities that are mandatory to implement a dataspace:
- Connector
- Federated Catalog
- Identity Hub
- Registration Service
- Data Dashboard (Management UI)
The project also provides repositories to support the onboarding of developers with with simplified, essential samplings:
- Samples
- Demonstrator (MVD)
The EDC project is governed by the Eclipse Foundation and is and its project management, implementation, communication, and compliance follow the corresponding roles and rules, based on a mediocratic paradigmbased on the principles of openness, transparency, and meritocracy. The EDC Committers provides a core group of people that are ensures the project’s progress roadmap and give provides guidance to the community of contributors, users, and other stakeholders.
All deliverables of the EDC are provided under either Apache 2.0 or under Creative Commons licensing to encourage re-use, further development, and (commercial) adoption.
The content of this open source project is received and distributed under the license(s) listed above. Some source code and binaries may be distributed under different terms. Specific license information is provided in file headers and in NOTICE files distributed with the project's binaries.