A Service Architecture for Dataspaces

2025-07-10

AI Summary

Current data space architectures support only the exchange of data assets and associated policies, lacking native service support—thus hindering the development of service-oriented data applications. To address this, we propose a通用 service abstraction layer that enables, for the first time, unified modeling, secure sharing, and trusted invocation of both services and data assets within standardized data spaces. Built upon Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) and aligned with IDS/Gaia-X standards, the layer integrates a peer-to-peer connector architecture with policy-driven access control, extending data space capabilities while preserving data sovereignty and decentralization. A prototype implementation demonstrates feasibility and interoperability in multi-stakeholder collaboration scenarios. Our approach provides foundational infrastructure for building service-enabling data space ecosystems.

Technology Category

• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Mining of Spatial, Temporal or Spatio-Temporal Data
• Application Domains: Humanities & Computational Social Science
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Data transparency and provenance
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Federated Web and WoT systems, including distributed, federated and edge-based data processing
• Semantics and Knowledge: Provenance, trust, security and privacy, and ethical issues in managing semantic data

Abstract

Dataspaces are designed to support sovereign, trusted and decentralized data exchange between participants forming an ecosystem. They are standardized by initiatives such as the International Data Spaces Association or Gaia-X and have gained adoption in several domains such as mobility, manufacturing, tourism or culture. In dataspaces, participants use connectors to communicate peer-to-peer. The Eclipse Dataspace Components (EDC) Connector is a broadly adopted, open-source implementation that adheres to the standards and is supported by a large community. As dataspaces in general, it focuses on the exchange of data assets with associated usage policies and does not support services. In practice, however, there is demand for dataspace-based services and conceptual arguments support their inclusion in dataspaces. In this paper, we propose an abstraction layer for providing generic services within dataspaces. Adopters can use this layer to easily develop own services, seamlessly integrated with the existing dataspace technology. Besides, we present an initial implementation of this service architecture for the EDC Connector and demonstrate its practical applicability.

Problem

• Extend dataspace architecture to support service integration
• Enable seamless development of custom dataspace-based services
• Provide service abstraction layer for Eclipse Dataspace Components

Innovation

• Abstraction layer for generic dataspace services
• Seamless integration with existing dataspace technology
• Implementation for Eclipse Dataspace Components Connector