optimade-maker: Automated generation of interoperable materials APIs from static data

2026-03-12

AI Summary

This work addresses the fragmentation of atomic structure data across heterogeneous databases in materials science, which lacks unified and interoperable access interfaces, compounded by the high technical barrier to deploying APIs compliant with the OPTIMADE standard. To overcome these challenges, the authors introduce optimade-maker, a toolkit that enables, for the first time, the automatic generation and deployment of standards-compliant OPTIMADE REST APIs from arbitrary static materials datasets. The toolkit supports diverse input formats and facilitates rapid deployment in both local and production environments. By significantly lowering the barrier to FAIR data sharing, optimade-maker has been successfully integrated into the Materials Cloud Archive and used to establish standardized access pipelines for the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), thereby greatly enhancing data discoverability and cross-database analytical capabilities.

Abstract

Atomistic structural data are central to materials science, condensed matter physics, and chemistry, and are increasingly digitised across diverse repositories and databases. Interoperable access to these heterogeneous data sources enables reusable clients and tools, and is essential for cross-database analyses and data-driven materials discovery. Toward this aim, the OPTIMADE (Open Databases Integration for Materials Design) specification defines a standard REST API for atomistic structures and related properties. However, deploying and maintaining compliant services remains technically demanding and poses a significant barrier for many data providers. Here, we present optimade-maker, a lightweight toolkit for the automated generation of OPTIMADE-compliant APIs directly from raw atomistic structure and property data. The toolkit supports a wide range of raw datasets, enables conversion to a standardised OPTIMADE data representation, and allows for rapid deployment of APIs in both local and production environments. We further demonstrate it through an automated service on the Materials Cloud Archive, which automatically creates and publishes OPTIMADE APIs for contributed datasets, enabling immediate discoverability and interoperability. In addition, we implement data transformation pipelines for the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and the Inorganic Crystal Structure Database (ICSD), enabling unified access to these curated resources through the OPTIMADE framework. By lowering the technical barriers to interoperable data publication, optimade-maker represents an important step toward a scalable, FAIR materials data ecosystem integrating both community-contributed and curated databases.

Problem

• interoperability
• materials data
• OPTIMADE
• API deployment
• heterogeneous databases

Innovation

• OPTIMADE
• interoperable API
• automated data conversion
• materials informatics
• FAIR data